A Season Of Festivities
by JuniperGentle
Summary: A collection of short, festive fics as my Advent Calendar gift/challenge for 2018. Two festive-themed words per day inspire the chapters, with a new character every day. December 25th: The time has come for Dynamis to make an announcement. He just wasn't expecting everyone to be there to hear it.
1. Celebrate & Festival

_Once again I'm ignoring the fact that I have multiple other series on the go and starting a new fic, but hey! It's December, and that means Advent calendar time._

 _I have decided a list of twenty five characters, and found a list of fifty words relating to both the sacred and secular side of Christmas. From now until 25th December, each character will get a starring role in a short story/drabble based around two of the words, or possibly two mini-stories, one for each word, depending. The words will be the chapter titles for each day. Today, for example, the words are "celebrate" and "festival", starring the one and only Aguma._

 _(Today is also late because I couldn't think up the main title. Never mind.)  
_

 _Unlike my previous Advent calendar (An Inadvertent Advent), this one isn't intentionally funny. Hopefully you'll like it anyway._

 _All the best to you and your loved ones this holiday season._

* * *

 **Aguma**

The air was dry and cold this far up in the mountains. Aguma rubbed his hands together, feeling the familiar prickling that suggested he had been stood out here a little too long. Not that he minded. It was good to be somewhere quiet for once, to be able to think clearly.

In the year since the Beylin Fist had announced its presence to the world, only to find themselves caught up in a world domination plot lead by what turned out to be a literal god of destruction, a lot of things had changed. For one thing, Beylin Fist was now almost a household name among beybladers, with several of their highest ranked bladers regularly being invited to international competitions to give the other competitors a proper challenge, especially in tag-team tournaments. For another, there was something approaching – well, not _friendliness,_ but perhaps _cordiality_ between Beylin Fist and Beylin Temple. Not that they'd managed to face each other in battle yet.

And, for the first time that he could remember, Aguma was looking forward to the annual Winter Festival. He'd even thought up a proper song-chant of the things he wanted to celebrate, to join everyone else's. That was definitely a new thing.

"Aguma?"

He didn't bother turning around. "Do you need me, Bao?"

"No. Just wondering what you were doing out here so long." Bao stepped up onto the ledge beside him, firmly wrapped in a thick cloak. "Hiding from the chaos, I guess."

Aguma took a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching it form white clouds in the air. "It is quiet out here." Bao made a faint noise of agreement and Aguma saw his shoulders relax somewhat under the cloak as he imitated Aguma's sigh. "Let me guess, they're all getting on your nerves again?"

He didn't need to be looking at his friend to know Bao was rolling his eyes. "Some of them. From the way they're acting, you'd think the junior teams _want_ to set fire to half the decorations before they even manage to get them up. And the senior teams are no help, half of _them_ have gone off to the waterfalls to catch fish even though I told them yesterday the river is frozen. Then the Elders insisted that we move the main tables to the entrance hall, so I had to argue them out of that because I get that we're doing new things this year but I draw the line at freezing my butt off by having the feast next to the main doors."

"By the _main doors?_ " Aguma spluttered. "No! Even I know that's a stupid idea, what were they thinking?"

"Nice to know someone agrees with me straight away," Bao sighed. "Anyway, come back in soon. It's getting dark. They'll ring the bell for dinner in a bit and I'll need your help afterwards. I know you don't like the festival much, but…."

"No, it's fine, I'm actually looking forward to it. I'll come in in a minute."

Bao gave him an amused look. "Who are you and what have you done with my friend?" he asked, smiling. "You hate the Winter Festival. I don't think you've ever called your own blessings-chant, you just have your family's."

"No," Aguma corrected him. "I didn't hate the festival itself. I hated having to celebrate when there was nothing _to_ celebrate. We were just hiding in the mountains of China, never doing anything, never succeeding at anything. Having a festival to celebrate us doing nothing seemed pointless to me." He looked up at the sky. "But there's plenty to celebrate this year."

"That's true," Bao agreed. "And if you come inside soon, I might even have to celebrate you not turning into an icicle. Not that I really fancy making up a blessings-chant verse for _that._ Are there any words that rhyme with icicle except bicycle?"

Aguma shook his head, trying and failing to hide a smile. "Not that I know of. Go on. I'll catch up. I just want a few more minutes of being able to hear myself think."

He didn't get an answer, but a second later he heard Bao's shoes against the rock as his friend climbed back down from the ledge.

" _For sky above and rock beneath / for shelter, water, food to eat,"_ he half-sang to himself, the first verse of the standard blessings-chant. _"For beys that spin and spirits bright / for days to hold against the night; Before you now I shall relate / the things I wish to celebrate."_

What could he add?

Obviously, celebrating the fall of Nemesis and the emergence of the Beylin Fist into the wider world was important. But that wasn't all he wanted to celebrate this year. There were lots of good things that had happened, more than he had ever expected.

He was stronger than he'd ever been, in tag with Bao or solo. Scythe Kronos had retained its monstrous power once the Star Fragment was no longer needed, and every battle he'd had since then had proven that he was still capable of wielding it to its maximum.

Along with that, he had opponents that were worth facing. Now that he was no longer only challenged by his own people and had rivals from every walk of life, it was easy enough to find battles that he genuinely enjoyed. Opponents like Gingka Hagane, or Tithi, who still unnerved Aguma slightly but was as genuinely friendly as anyone he had ever met. Kyouya Tategami had actually made a point of seeking Aguma out to battle him one more time, in order to claim a victory over every Legendary Blader, and Aguma was only _slightly_ bitter than the owner of Fang Leone had managed to beat him a third time.

There were even people who weren't opponents that he could now call companions, even friends. Yuki Misusawa kept in monthly contact with all of the Legendary Bladers, and it wasn't as rare as he had expected to get a card from Madoka asking how everyone was.

Talking of Madoka, that was another thing to celebrate – his bey was in one piece. It had taken weeks to repair all the damage, but Madoka had done a better job than anyone else could have done, and returned Scythe Kronos to Aguma almost better than new.

He had a tribe of people to call his own. He had saved the world. He had fulfilled his mission to bring Beylin Fist into the wider world and have them and their style recognised around the globe. He had proved that he was capable of leading the tribe to victory, and had done so on several occasions.

And, perhaps more importantly than any of those, he had two stalwart companions who never had and never would abandon him. With Scythe Kronos in his hand and Bao at his side, who could stand against him?

Yes, Aguma thought to himself as he turned away from the darkening sky and back to the shining lights and warmth of his Winter Fortress home. That was the nice thing about winter. There was time to think about the things that made the rest of the year so good, as the days got darker and shorter and colder.

As the old year died, and he and his family celebrated the things that had made it worthwhile, there was one thing Aguma knew for certain.

Next year was going to be _even better._


	2. Travel & Reunion

**Masamune**

Masamune _loved_ Christmas.

This didn't surprise anyone who knew him even the slightest bit, but what did surprise most people was the reason he loved it.

The food was great. That there was so much of it was a definite plus. It was also a generally noisy, somewhat chaotic time, and that suited Masamune just fine. The idea of decorating the dark streets and houses with hundreds of colourful lights to make the night more beautiful than the day was genius as far as he was concerned. He loved the crisp chill in the air, and the feeling of being wrapped up in warm blankets by the radiator whilst the wind howled outside.

But the thing Masamune most loved about Christmas was that he got to travel.

The train rattled as it went over a viaduct, and Masamune leaned back in his seat, popping another wasabi pea into his mouth. Just another few hours to go, and then he would be at the second-to-last place on his list.

"You're completely mad," Kenta had told him when Masamune explained his holiday plans. "You can't possibly manage to see _everyone._ "

"But it's Christmas!" Masamune had protested. "You have to see everyone at Christmas! And anyway, I do it every year, I've just got more people to see this time."

" _Completely_ mad," Kenta had muttered, but still came to the station to wave his friend off.

That had been two weeks ago. Since then, Masamune had stayed in a different house every night, travelling around Japan to see all of his friends and former team-mates who had scattered to their own homes. Some of them, like Tsubasa and Yuu, he had seen fairly recently at the American tournaments. Others, like Kyouya and Hikaru, were more difficult to track down. But he'd managed all of them, even Hyoma up in Koma Village (that had been an interesting trip. He was still certain Hyoma had lead him in circles for at least four hours before arriving at the village, but he had no proof).

Then he'd jumped on an aeroplane and gone off to China to find Wang Hu Zhong.

 _Then_ he'd jumped on another plane and gone to Europe, only to find that Julian didn't like unexpected guests (Wales did. So did Klaus), and that King had gone to meet _him_ by misunderstanding Masamune's plan.

Which was why he'd had to put an extra stop on his American trip. He had just a week to go before Christmas Day, and the most important people on his list were yet to be visited.

It didn't bother him that much, though. If his plan was rigid and had to be followed to the letter, it wouldn't be a great plan, and he was Masamune Kadoya! He always made great plans! Besides, it meant he got to do just a bit more travelling.

It was nice to watch the city blur past, grey and dreary in the rain but sparkling with lights and colour as the Christmas decorations lit up the afternoon. He could watch it for hours, how the wintry landscapes changed from empty and flat and dull to to high and crowded with lights and back again.

Even the station looked beautiful as the train finally pulled in. The platforms shone silver with rain, glittering reflected light, and from every arch and doorway wreaths of greenery and strings of yet more fairy lights hung, making the whole place seem strangely magical.

"Masamune! Masamune! Hey, over here!"

At the other end of the platform, a very familiar figure was waving wildly at him. Masamune covered the last few metres at a sprint, dropping his bags as King grabbed him into a tight hug.

"Hey, it's great to see you again!"

"You too! It's been forever, what have you been doing with yourself?"

"Looking for you! You were supposed to be in Greece, I went all that way to see you and you weren't there!"

King looked a little bit embarrassed. He let go, stepping back and allowing Masamune to pick his bags up. "Yeah, sorry about that. Misread your email. But you're here now, that's the important bit!"

Masamune grinned at him. "Yeah, that's right! So, where are you staying?"

King winced. "Um… nowhere? I might have kind of slept at the station last night, I only booked one night in the hotel because I was meeting you and… well. That happened."

"In the _station?"_ That wouldn't do at all. "Why didn't you say something? I'd have found you somewhere, I had wifi on the plane."

King shook his head. "Nah, it was fine. Not the first time I've done something dumb like that. But it does mean I don't have anywhere you can stay tonight."

Masamune frowned. Well, what was travelling at Christmas time without a few disasters? "I've got an idea!" he said suddenly. "You should come with me! I was meant to be going to Zeo's next, he basically lives with Toby now, their houses are next to each other and they're both huge so there'd definitely be space for you! They'd love to see you, I know they would."

King had perked up at the mention of the other Team Dungeon bladers. "I haven't seen them in ages," he admitted. "They weren't at the last big tournament, were they?"

"No, Toby had a bunch of medical tests he had to go for and Zeo didn't want to battle without him so they stayed out." Masamune was making his way towards the ticket offices, his friend trailing behind him. "You saw Tsubasa and Yuu, though, right?"

"Yeah, they were there. Yuu's getting really strong, it's so awesome."

That was true. Yuu had been getting much stronger recently, ostensibly to challenge Kyouya, who was still claiming to be the strongest Legendary Blader as he'd beaten the largest number of other Legendary Bladers. But Masamune thought there might be something else to it, a determination to make someone proud of him. "I saw him a few weeks ago, he said he'd be over with Tsubasa again in the new year. We should all meet up and have a battle – hey, did I tell you I've got a new special move?"

"No? Oh man! Now I want to battle you!"

"Later!" Masamune laughed. "I know that sounds weird for me to say and I really want to battle you too, but I don't want to get kicked out of the station again." He winced. "That happened last year. I had to get to Toby's by hitch-hiking. Never again."

King had a strange sort of smile on his face. "You really travel to see everyone at Christmas?" he said as they stopped in front of the ticket booth and Masamune set about digging through his bag for his money. "Why?"

"I want to see everyone," Masamune explained. It made sense to him anyway. That was the only real reason he needed. "When I was a kid I loved going to Zeo and Toby's for Christmas, but they couldn't have me staying the whole month because they had other family over, so I went around and visited other people I knew until they could take me in. It's nice to see lots of people. I always used to travel around with my family when I was younger, my relatives were pretty scattered all over the globe so my parents always spent about two weeks travelling to go and see everyone."

"So it's sort of a tradition with you?" King asked, taking the two tickets from the counter and thanking the clerk. "Don't you get bored of travelling all the time?"

"Not really? You get to see all these amazing places every year, and see how they've changed. Hang on, I should probably actually check with Zeo that he's happy for me to turn up a day early, just a sec."

King laughed. "And you didn't think to do that until _after_ you bought the tickets for the next train to his city?"

"Gaaaahhh!" Masamune said, accurately.

.

Luckily for the two young men, Zeo was all too delighted to have Masamune arrive early with a friend in tow. "Save me from my aunt," he pleaded when Masamune phoned him. "She doesn't understand blading, she thinks it's a kid's game and so she keeps stopping me from training to go and do things with her that will 'make you a more rounded human being, Zeo, instead of obsessing over spinning tops all the time! You don't even have a girlfriend!' I don't want a girlfriend! Especially not one she approves of! I've got enough on my plate looking out for Toby, let alone having a relationship at the same time."

"Is Toby okay?" Masamune asked, concerned. "He had another test the other day, right?"

"Yeah, he's fine. The doctors say he should just need one more round and then he'll be clear. He's really looking forward to seeing you, he hasn't shut up about it since you gave us the date you were supposed to be arriving."

"Yeah, me too. Anyway, I'll see you at the station in a few hours."

"Yeah, we'll be there! See you soon, buddy."

"Come on, Masamune!" King called from the bottom of the stairs. "They've called our train, we've got to get to Platform 11 and we're still on Platform 2!"

They got to the train with moments to spare, and collapsed into their seats, laughing helplessly. "That was fun!" King exclaimed happily. "How long's it supposed to take to get there, anyway?"

"Seven hours?" Masamune shrugged. "I think we're due in just before midnight."

King pulled a face. "Seven hours? If I'd known we'd have been stuck on a train for seven hours maybe I wouldn't have been so keen."

"Ah, come on," Masamune said. "It's not all bad, travelling at Christmas time. You get to see everything differently. That's why I like it so much." He sat back as the train accelerated to full speed. "It's weird, actually. I don't like travelling any other time, when I'm going to tournaments or something. I always just want to get there and get started, I hate having to spend all that time on planes or trains. But when it's Christmas and I'm going to visit everyone? I like the journey just as much as getting to see people again."

King looked around. "I wish there was a beydish on this train. We could have a battle while we were waiting."

"I've been on a train with a beydish before," Masamune said, suddenly remembering. "It had beds too, we were on it for three whole days."

"Three _days?_ Where were you going that needed _three days_ by train?"

"Have I never told you about it? It was the Russian leg of the first World Championship. I was with Tsubasa, Yuu, Gingka and Madoka, and we had to go all the way across Russia from China to get to the stadium. And then I didn't even get to fight."

"Why? Were the Russians that easy to beat?"

"No, they tricked me! They put out a hamburger trail and I was hungry so I followed it and ended up getting on the wrong train just as they closed the doors and set off from the station." At King's raised eyebrows, he defended himself; "They were _really good_ hamburgers."

King laughed. "Well, I guess that's a good enough reason, then. But what happened? How did you get back?"

"Well, I found myself at a weird station all the way over by the sea in some kind of _desert..."_

 _._

With someone to talk to, the miles flew past. Masamune and King barely noticed how long they had been sat on the train until the driver announced that the next station was going to be theirs.

"Whoa," King said as the train slowed down to approach the station. "That tree is _huge!_ Look at it, it must be sixty feet tall! And the lights are _beautiful_."

"That's the town Christmas tree," Masamune explained. "They have it every year, it's the first thing you see when you're coming into the town by train. That's what always used to tell me I was nearly here – seeing that tree meant I was going to see my friends in just a few more minutes."

"And the lights in all the houses! Hey, look! There's a Santa on that roof! And – whoa, the lights are _synchronised?"_

Masamune laughed. "That's Zeo's house. They've always got the best display in town, no question. They made it into the newspapers once." He smiled, remembering. "This is what Christmas feels like to me. Coming in to Zeo's home town and seeing the tree all lit up, and then seeing his house and the Santa on the roof. I get to stay with a lot of people at Christmas and they're all sort of home because my friends are there, but this is really where Christmas is for me. That's why this is always the last place I come at Christmas, because this is home."

King looked at him, but didn't say anything except "Hey, looks like we're here."

Masamune snapped back to the present, eyes dancing with excitement. "I can't see them on the platform," he said, leaning to look out of the small door-window. "Maybe they're on the other side?"

"Just open the door! We can look for them when we're off!"

Someone else had clearly had the same idea, because the door hissed open just at that moment, and the two young men all but tumbled on to the platform. Regaining his balance, Masamune looked around, but before he could spot his friends, his attention was caught by a loud yell.

"HEY! MASAMUNE!"

"ZEO! TOBY!"

King was left behind for a moment with the luggage as Masamune flew down the second platform of the day and collided with his two best friends in the whole world, laughing with delight. Yes, this was right, this was home, this was _Christmas._ Moments later, the Greek blader was drawn into their circle, bringing all of the Team Dungeon members back together at last.

Masamune loved travelling at Christmas. He loved the way the people on the trains and planes seemed slightly happier than usual. He loved the decorated stations and airports. He loved the ever-changing landscape rushing by outside a dozen windows. He loved seeing the different ways people decorated their houses as he passed them in a coach or metro.

But most of all, Masamune loved the reason why he travelled – the feeling of stepping off a train into the warmth and light of someone he loved coming to meet him, reuniting with those he cared about, and knowing that no matter where he travelled around the world, there would always be somewhere he could call home.


	3. Toys & Peace

_According to one reviewer, a fanfic advent calendar is **even better** than a chocolate advent calandar. That is high praise indeed..._

* * *

 **Hyoma**

The wood was warm and almost soft in his hands, melting away under the knife. In the light from the small fire burning next to him (mostly fuelled by previous attempts) the golden-brown wood seemed almost alive, the tiny carved feathers flickering with shadows.

The bill was always going to be the hardest bit, but he was certain he'd picked the right piece of wood this time. Carefully, he shaved millimetres of wood from the rough shape, paring it down to something more recognisable.

It was tradition. One wooden toy for each child under the age of twelve in the village, carved in the two weeks leading up to the Winter Solstice celebration by a member of his family. Before him, it had been his father; before _him,_ his grandfather. Hyoma hadn't always enjoyed this extra responsibility, but the older he got the more he appreciated the nights of quiet carving up on the rocky ledges around the village, keeping watch over his peaceful home whilst he carved.

At first, it had simply been a way to introduce the children of the village to beys, carving the small traditional wooden tops that had given their general shape to the modern metal beys. But slowly, more elaborate gifts and carvings had been introduced, until only the children who were turning five in the coming year were given the wooden beys.

Koma Village didn't have too many children any more. After he and Gingka had left the village, there were only a few youngsters left. Most of the young adults had moved away to the towns lower down the mountain for work, raising their own children there and leaving Koma to the elders and the few remaining families who wanted to keep the traditions alive.

Hyoma brushed a curl of wood off his lap and tilted the small model he was holding. Well, at least this one looked more like a duck than the previous few attempts. Just three more to make, and then he would be done.

"Why am I not surprised to find you out here?"

If Hyoma had been anyone but who he was, he would have jumped and probably cut himself badly on the knife at the impossible voice. As it was, he dropped the slowly-forming duck onto the ground as he spun around. " _Gingka?_ "

Behind him, silhouetted against the full moon and face lit by Hyoma's small fire, stood none other than Gingka Hagane, the best blader in the world – and also the most elusive. "Hello, Hyoma. It's been a while."

"You can say that again," Hyoma said, picking up the toy and brushing it off gently. "You're more difficult to find than Ryuga used to be, and that's saying something. Where have you been? Hokuto's been asking about you for months."

"Here and there," Gingka shrugged. "And I can't stay long even now, only a day or so at most." He pointed at the duck. "Who's getting that?"

Hyoma smiled, indicating to Gingka to sit down. "Riku. Her mother tells me she's obsessed with ducks right now. This fellow's going to have wheels and a pull-string, she'll love it."

Gingka's eyes widened. "You've definitely got better," he said, dropping down to sit on Hyoma's left. "I remember when you couldn't even carve a pencil."

"I _have_ been doing this for nearly fifteen years, Gingka. If I wasn't better by now I'd be concerned."

"Yeah, but you only do it for the Winter Solstice. Fifteen times isn't anything at all, you know that."

Hyoma laughed. "It's a bit more than fifteen," he said, pointing to his fire. "This is Duck Number 7. And don't even talk to me about the cat."

"Cat? Who's that for?"

"Takamine. You haven't met him, he's only two."

Gingka looked almost sad. "Yeah… guess it's been a while since I managed to get back here." He forced a smile. "So, who are the lucky ones getting beys this year?"

Hyoma pointed at the four wooden tops lying by the paint pots. "Lili, Shiro, Dai and Momo. They're all old enough now."

"I remember Lili being _born,_ " Gingka grumbled. "How is she five already?"

"She's going to be good," Hyoma told him. "She's already been playing with her brother's top for months. Wouldn't surprise me if she got a real bey pretty soon."

"She'll be the next one to step into the world circuits, you think?"

"Her, or maybe Hitomi. They're both good, almost as good as we were." Hyoma shook his head fondly, thinking of the two young girls and their fierce rivalry-friendship. "The next generation is growing up fast."

Gingka lay back in the grass, staring up at the sky. Hyoma hesitated for a moment, then decided that if both of them were there, it would be pretty tricky for any threats to approach, and joined him.

"There's a special sort of stillness here," Gingka said after a long moment. "I don't know if it's because it's so quiet or because the air's so clear or just because that's what Koma Village is like, but… it's so peaceful here. Not just on the outside. It's like my soul goes still here."

Hyoma smiled, despite knowing that Gingka couldn't see it. "That's Koma," he said. "I've been to dozens of other places that are quiet and clear, none of them are like Koma. You could have a full market day here and my soul would still be at peace."

"If everyone could feel like this, maybe they'd stop fighting all the time," Gingka sighed. He was silent for a while, then said, "I'm so tired of fighting."

Hyoma looked over at him, concerned. "You _love_ blading, Gingka. What's wrong?"

"Oh, no, I love _blading._ Having battles isn't the same as fighting. You know that. We had battles all the time when we were young, but we never fought. But that's changed now. With everything that's going on in the world, I've been fighting so long now I don't really know how to stop."

Now Hyoma understood. More to the point, he understood a little of why Gingka had come back so unexpectedly at this time of year, and for such a short time. "Koma will always be here for you," he said, a promise more than a statement. "Whatever peace you can find here, carry it with you. Of everyone I know, you deserve it the most."

Gingka made no answer, but Hyoma heard him sigh.

For a long time, they lay there in silence, like they had when they were children. Above them, thousands of stars sparkled in the night sky, constellations of fire so far away and yet somehow seeming so close. Aries and Pegasus shone clearly, close to each other but not quite together.

Hyoma closed his eyes, thinking back to the days when he and Gingka had been young enough to get the wooden Solstice toys. He still had most of his, but he knew all but two of Gingka's had been destroyed or lost. The only ones left were the precious wooden bey and the one-winged pegasus Hyoma had made for him on the first year he had been tasked with bringing the wooden gifts to the children and – well, he wasn't much more than a child himself then. The poor pegasus had been played with a lot, hence the single wing, and it was definitely not Hyoma's best work, but it was much loved and treasured by its owner. Gingka had been beyond delighted when Hyoma had given it back to him just after the Nemesis Crisis, having found it in the ruins of what had once been L-Drago's sanctuary-prison. It was a reminder of simper times, when wooden beys were all that was needed to battle, and even a one-winged pegasus could hold all the imagination of a child.

It was a reminder of peaceful days, before the real fighting had begun.

Sometimes Hyoma wondered if they could ever go back to those days completely. That was why he had chosen to remain in Koma Village, protecting the last bastion of peace and safety he knew of from those that sought to wield its power for evil purposes. And it was also why Gingka was never there, wandering the earth to seek out threats to the future of the world and the sport he loved so much, and eliminating them before they could become shadows on the sun.

It was hard work, but it was worth it to see the next generation smiling. That was the reason they did it. It was the reason he stayed up on guard every night. It was the reason Gingka never came home. It was the reason he sat in the dark by his little fire and carved tiny wooden animals. That was their legacy, what they had to pass on, what they had to _protect._

When he opened his eyes, Gingka was nowhere to be seen, gone as silently as he had arrived. The only hint that Koma Village's most famous inhabitant had really been there was the flattened grass to Hyoma's left, and a small wooden ram that was not Hyoma's handiwork, carved of white ash wood and painted in Aries' colours, standing on top of the paint pots.


	4. Traditions & Punch

**Yuki**

"What," said Yuu, "is _that?_ "

The object in question could only be described as an upside down, oversized boot, open at the toe and painted bright red, set in the middle of the kitchen table. Next to the table, Yuki fidgeted nervously, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"Um, it's… it's a Yuletide thing I used to do with my grandfather," he explained. "I… I thought it might be nice to try doing it here."

"Aha!" said Ryo Hagane, peering in around Tsubasa. "A family tradition! Those are always good. Tell me more."

Reassured by Ryo's interest, Yuki stopped fidgeting and stood up straight. "It's… well, I used to call it the Yule Clog."

"So… a joke on Yule log?" Tsubasa asked.

"Yeah!"

"It's not a clog, though," Yuu said, confused. "I've never seen anything look less like a clog."

"Yeah, I know. I was a kid and I thought it was funny and Grandfather liked the name so it sort of stuck."

"So what _is_ it?" Yuu asked again. "And why is it on the table instead of breakfast?"

"Breakfast's through here, Yuu!" That call came from Gingka, leaning in through the kitchen hatch from the main canteen. "I saved you a croissant before Kyouya ate them all and - whoa, Yuki, that thing looks even weirder than it did last night."

"You've seen it before?" Tsubasa asked.

"Last night," Yuki said. "I got it out to ask if he thought it would be alright to show to all of you."

"Traditions are good things to have," Ryo said. "They tie you to the good things of the past. I think it's a wonderful idea to bring a new tradition in now that the world has changed so much. Besides, there's lots of people here at the moment, traditions are always best when lots of people know about them and carry them on."

He was right. Whilst the fall of Nemesis had been a number of weeks ago, most of the Legendary Bladers and their friends still had not returned to their own homes, with the exception of King, who had gone to America with Masamune. The remaining eight, along with the others who had been on the island that day, were still all staying in the WBBA Tower. Privately, Yuki had been wondering at their apparent reluctance to leave, considering how comparatively little they knew about each other. Even famously anti-social Kyouya was still there.

But then Gingka, with unusual clarity of vision, had pointed out that apart from Kenta and the Beylin Fist bladers, who had other reasons to stay, none of them really had other homes to go to, let alone families. King's Greek island home had been swamped by a tsunami, Yuki's grandfather was long gone (as was his observatory, crumbled in the earthquakes), Dynamis only had his empty temple, Tithi had been alone for years, Chris lived out of hotels, and the rest were… well, it was just nice to stay together a bit longer.

So the WBBA Tower had been a bit busier than usual in the run-up to the first Christmas since the Nemesis Crisis.

"So go on," Yuu said, scrambling up onto the side and reaching through the hatch for the croissant Gingka had saved for him. "What's this weird clog-boot got to do with Christmas?"

Yuki took a deep breath. Now to see if it would all be worth the trouble of going to get it. "It's a bit like that American tradition Masamune told us about the other day, the Santa Secret?"

"Secret Santa?" Tsubasa asked.

"Oh, yes, that's its name. Yes, like that. Everyone put their name into the clog and then the rest of it was filled up with sweets. We all sat around the fire with hot chocolate or tea or coffee, and all the lights were out except the fire and some candles. Everyone pulled out a sweet and a name. If you got a toffee, you had to tell everyone a story about something you did with the person whose name you had in the past year. If it was a chocolate, you had to tell everyone about somewhere you'd like to go with that person in the next year, or something you thought they'd enjoy doing. And if you got a mint or a truffle, you told everyone about something you learned either from or about your person in the last year." He looked down at his hands, willing them to stop shaking. There was no need to be so nervous here, where he knew everyone and knew they cared about him. They wouldn't think it was just some silly idea. "Grandfather always used to say it showed that everyone could learn something from everyone, no matter how young or old you were. It values everyone in the family equally, and all their knowledge and understanding and experience."

"That's a really nice tradition," Ryo said after a moment. "I'd definitely like to do it. Gingka, do you want to ask the others if they want to join in? We can do it this evening, I'll go out and buy some sweets this afternoon."

Yuki swelled with happiness. He'd been dreading having to go through Christmas without his grandfather, but maybe, just maybe, this might be the thing that made it okay. "Grandfather used to be able to get sweets that you couldn't tell what they were until you ate them, but I don't know what they were, I never asked him… and it's too late now."

"I'm sure I can find something," Ryo said comfortingly. "And in the meantime..."

Suddenly he looked very mischievous. Gingka frowned suspiciously. "Dad, what are you planning?"

"Nothing, never mind, never mind!" Ryo said innocently, not that anyone was taken in for a moment. "Now, did I hear someone say something about croissants?"

.

The evening was wet and windy, and even Kyouya seemed glad to be inside. By the time that dinner was over, it had blow up to a proper storm outside, and only Kenta, who had been suffering from a cold, was not huddled down in the living areas near the fire.

"Now, just before we start," Ryo said, when Yuki had brought the filled Clog out, "I have something to do first. Yuki, you've been kind enough to introduce us to a new tradition, so now let _me_ introduce you to one of _our_ traditions, a very old one. I know your grandfather had some history with Koma Village, Yuki. It's your birthright to know about this."

And from under the table he pulled an enormous bowl, made of a strange, silvery wood and covered in dozens of detailed carvings of constellations, beys, houses, people, animals, mountains, rivers, forests – everything that surrounded the little village in the mountains that Gingka and Ryo, and Yuki's grandfather, had called home.

"Dad," said Gingka, and only those who knew him very well could tell whether his voice was warning or terribly excited. "Is that the Koma Village Solstice Punch Bowl?"

"Yep." Ryo sounded very proud of himself.

"The actual punch bowl."

"Yep."

"You… you _stole the punch bowl_. Dad!"

"I'll take it back for the Summer Solstice, don't worry!"

" _You_ _stole the punch bowl._ "

"Hokuto gave it to me!"

"You… you know what, I give up. I'm not going to bother arguing with you." Gingka threw his hands up, but he was smiling and clearly wasn't that upset. "Go on. You tell them how it works, I'm going to go and root Kenta out of his room. I don't care if he's ill, I'm not letting him miss this."

Yuki put a hand out to touch the beautiful silvery bowl, then hesitated. "Can I?" he asked.

"Of course!" Ryo said, smiling. "It's yours too, after all. You're part of our family now, part of Koma Village."

Yuki felt a chill run down his spine at the words – a happy feeling, fizzing and wonderful like the moment his telescope sharpened on a new star. _His._ He let his fingers run over the bowl, tracing the dozens of designs cut into the wood. Such a beautiful thing was _his._

"So how do we do this one?" Chris asked, elbows firmly planted on his knees where he sat in the armchair by the window. "Yuki's is pretty cool, but this one looks good too."

"We're making punch," Ryo explained. "But not the way you might expect. Look over on the side, there are thirteen different juices or spices – and before you say anything, Tsubasa, I know Tithi and Yuu aren't old enough for alcohol, it's all fruit juice so stop worrying! Everyone gets one item that they can put as much or as little of as they like into the punch bowl. Once everything is in, everyone drinks from it at the same time."

"There's two ways it can go," Gingka said, reappearing with a sleepy-looking Kenta in tow. "Okay, three. You can either all talk about it in advance and compromise, so everyone's reasonably happy. Or you can just go for it and either end up with something weirdly delicious or absolutely terrible." He looked at his father. "For some reason, it never seems to end up in the middle."

"And of course, it means you can never replicate the recipe again," Ryo explained. "Because every gathering of people is unique and special and they all bring something to the table that no-one else can. Even if all the people are there again, they're not exactly the same as the first time, because they've learned more or seen more or know more. It's like your grandfather said, Yuki. Everyone has something to offer, and everyone together is more than the sum of the whole. I thought that might be something else good for all you Legendary Bladers to remember."

Yuki nodded, not trusting his voice. He'd wanted to have people to share _his_ tradition so that it didn't fade away into nothingness with no more Mizusawas to carry it on with. But just because he was the last of his family didn't mean that he had no family at all. And now there was a tradition that was new to them and old to him, and one that was old to them and new to him.

"Here," said Tsubasa, catching his attention and pulling him out of his thoughts. "I'm afraid you got left with the star anise."

Apparently, everyone had gone for the 'go for whatever you want' option, rather than discussing it. Yuki had no idea what had already gone in, but judging by the number of empty juice cartons, most people had just opted for putting in _everything._ A handful of cloves and some slices of orange bobbed on the top of the liquid. Feeling rather self-conscious, Yuki tossed two of the star anise in. Hopefully that wouldn't overpower anything. Punch was always tricky to get right.

It was the work of only a few minutes to warm the punch up enough to mull the spices, during which time it became clear that no-one had any kind of coherent plan behind their input, and most of them had no idea of what punch should taste like anyway.

"This is beginning to sound oddly familiar," Tsubasa muttered to Yuki. "Remember how the Legendary Bladers didn't really have a plan until it was too late?"

"Don't remind me," Dynamis sighed from Yuki's other side. "I think that is also going to be something of a tradition with this group..."

Ryo handed out the glasses, already filled. Aguma gave his a slightly suspicious look, but waited until everyone had one. Yuki had managed to get one of his star anise back, along with a slice of orange. The cup was warm in his hands, the liquid a strange orange-y brown.

"Well, here goes," said Chris.

Everyone drank.

And then almost everyone started coughing helplessly.

"Who put the cinnamon in?" Kyouya spluttered as soon as he could catch a breath, and Tithi raised a hand nervously.

"Was it too much?" he asked. "I put three big spoons in because there was a lot of juice and I like cinnamon."  
"That… might have been a bit too much," Chris wheezed. "Ow. That burns."

"I quite like it," Hikaru said, raising her cup and grinning. "If you can't handle it, boys, all the more for me."

"I never said I couldn't handle it," Kyouya snapped, but for once there was no malice in his voice. "It just doesn't taste of anything except cinnamon."

"Cinnamon's great!" Yuu chimed in, but he was also coughing. "Yeah, maybe not quite so much next time, Tithi. Bit too spicy."

"Ignore them, Tithi, it's spiced things up nicely," Bao said, and moments later a surprisingly good-natured argument had broken out where most of the exchanges seemed to be based on cinnamon-related puns.

Yuki looked around at the twelve people gathered close around him, hearing their laughter and seeing the smiles at the shared disaster. Sure, in a few minutes they would be in the middle of his own tradition, but in this moment it didn't matter whose it was. It was just as Ryo had said – the two traditions were so similar in their meaning even if they were different on the outside. Hadn't that been the very thing that tied all of the Legendary Bladers and eventually the whole of the world together against Nemesis? That things could be so different on the outside whilst the heart wished for the same thing?

He was looking forward to hearing all the stories about the people he had now been living with for nearly three months, looking forward to learning what they could teach him and what they had taught others, looking forward to seeing them as part of his family.

But for now, he was just happy to be a part of _theirs_.

* * *

 _A/N: This one was... interesting. Halfway through, the characters decided they didn't like where the story was going and yelled at me until I realised they were right, and then had to rewrite most of the second half. Also, it was weirdly difficult to fit these two words into a single story, all things considered._


	5. Wreath & Sledge

**Sophie**

Her teammates always said they never knew what to expect whenever they showed up at Sophie's house. Sometimes it would be full of people. Sometimes it would be full of food. Sometimes it would be full of clothes (Sophie had only a passing interest, but her mother was a famous fashion designer and it was not unusual for the finishing touches to be done by hand). Sometimes it would be full of other members of the team, who always seemed to take up far more room than was strictly necessary, especially Wales.

So today it was both a surprise and not a surprise to find her house full of –

"Sophie, why are you living in a tree?"

Sophie looked around with a jolt, almost dropping the basket of ribbons in her hands. "Oh! Julian, you're here! Sorry, I'll just – hang on, let me – aaargh, how have these managed to get all over the place, I organised them only this morning!"

Julian stayed very still as his only female teammate looked around at the piles of branches and leaves everywhere, then sighed and pushed a box of fir cones off the piano stool. "Um, sorry. This is going to have to do for a chair if you want to sit down. I wasn't expecting you until this afternoon, we'd have tidied up a bit by then."

"It _is_ this afternoon. It's 2pm."

Sophie blinked and looked at her watch. "That… would explain a few things. Again, sorry. We're making wreaths in the dining room, I got distracted."

"Wreaths? How many are you doing? You've got half a forest in here."

Sophie smiled. "There are over thirty doors in my house, Julian. Every door gets one. And then we make ones for the front doors of all our neighbours' houses, and I make some extras. So… about sixty altogether?"

"Sixty wreaths." Julian said flatly. " _Sixty._ "

"We do it every year, it's fun. Except getting pine sap all over my clothes, that's less fun."

"And why do I get the feeling I'm going to be roped into this?"

"Because you are," came Klaus' slightly mournful voice from the doorway to the largest dining room. "I've been here since nine and we haven't stopped yet." He had a trail of ivy wrapped around his upper arm. "I was supposed to be here for coffee."

"That's nothing, I've been here since _yesterday,_ " said Wales, coming down the stairs behind them. "Hello, Konzern. Good to see you again. There's no more gold baubles, by the way, Sophie, I checked everywhere."

That was odd. Sophie was certain she had ordered enough for all of the wreaths. "Oh, I'll look again later, they might be in one of the bedrooms. Anyway, we should get some lunch, I hadn't realised how long we'd been working."

"Food!" Klaus cheered, pulling the ivy off.

.

Considering that the wreaths were technically only being made in the largest of Sophie's family's three dining rooms, Sophie was slightly concerned to discover that the only room in the house that had chairs that weren't covered in large amounts of greenery was the second kitchen, and even that had a few stray strands of tinsel. Somehow, her craftwork had spilled out into almost every room in the house. Team Excalibur gathered something resembling lunch together and settled down at the table. Wales in particular looked very relieved to be out of the chaos for a while. Sophie felt a little bit guilty about that – he _had_ arrived earlier than she expected, but taking advantage of that and getting him to help her make nearly twenty wreaths the day before was a little bit mean when he had only come because she'd promised to take him to the Lyon food markets as an early Christmas present.

"Is the operation always this huge?" Julian asked, taking a bite of his trout tartare. "Sixty fresh wreaths is a lot."

"It's not normally sixty," Sophie said. "Normally we'd have a wreath on each of the front gates, one on the main front door, and then one on all of the downstairs internal doors because those are the only ones people will see when they visit, plus the ones for the neighbours and my spare ones. That's about twenty in all. But it's my family's turn to host the extended family for the big Christmas party, and most of them will be staying a whole week so everywhere has to be decorated this year. Hence the sixty." She smiled. "I'm looking forward to seeing my cousins again, though. We don't have the big party every year, so I haven't seen them since I joined Excalibur. They're bladers too, or they were last time I saw them, it'll be nice having something to talk about that isn't the weather or how fast my third cousin's baby is growing up."

"How big _is_ your extended family?" Wales asked. "Sounds like a crowd."

"Forty three at the last count?" Sophie guessed. "Not sure. Some of my distant cousins seem to have a new partner and-or child every time I see them. And then there's the question of exactly where the extended family ends because if we're inviting the third cousins twice removed then you can imagine it gets big pretty fast."

"Christmas is really small in our family," Klaus said. "It's only me, my brothers, my parents and my father's parents. We call other people in the family on webcam, but there's only eight people actually in our house on Christmas."

"That sounds nice," Sophie sighed. "Way less prep, I guess. Even with the servants, it takes days to get this place up to my mother's standards. I've been tidying up non-stop since last Saturday, this is the last bit of mess I'm allowed to make before everything has to be perfect."

Wales seemed to be giving her an evaluating look. "So by all of us helping with the wreaths, we're helping you finish up faster so you don't have to spend so much time cleaning?" he guessed.

"Something like that," she agreed. "I can't remember the last time I had an evening to do nothing. I barely have evenings to train now. Now, we have to get back to those wreaths if we're going to be able to have any time at all later for doing... non-wreath related things."

She led the way back to the greenery-filled dining room, absently noting that Julian was taking his chair with him. Well, the piano stool wasn't the most comfortable of seats, she thought. Klaus immediately returned to his place at the end of the table, where massive trails of ivy wove around every surface and post, and resumed his task of teasing the breakable leaves out of their knotted vines. Wales sat down in his chair and started weaving the framework for what would be the forty-third wreath. Julian, still carrying his chair, looked hesitant, a very unusual expression for someone as self-assured as he was. Sophie cleared a space on the coffee table and dumped the basket of ribbons in front of him. "And what exactly am I doing with these?" he asked.

"Untangling them, then sorting them by colour and size. Any that are less than twenty centimetres long we don't need. Once you're done, give the blue ones to Klaus, any green or red ones to Wales, and the gold and silver ones to me."

She got one curt nod, and then Julian got to work as well.

The rest of the afternoon slipped past. Every wreath was similar but also distinct and unique. Privately, Sophie was quite impressed at how enthusiastically her teammates had taken to the strange craft. Wales' nimble fingers were excellent at weaving the branches together, Julian's eye for colour meant that all of the decorations matched, and Klaus was better than any of them at working out exactly how much greenery would be needed for each individual wreath without even having to measure it. All Sophie needed to do was tidy the wreaths up at the end.

"Sophie, I'm out of branches," Klaus said suddenly. "Oh, no, hang on, I found one!"

"No – Klaus, no, that's the Christmas tree!"

"…oops."

Luckily the damage was contained to a single broken branch, and with Klaus' prodigious strength available to them, it was easy enough to turn the tree around so that the gap in the branches was hidden.

"How many wreaths are we on?" Wales asked, leaning back and stretching his fingers out. "We've got to be nearly done by now."

"This is sixty-two," she said, indicating the one she was putting the finishing touches to. "So this is the last one. Actually, this one is yours."

"Mine?"

Sophie carefully tied off the last ribbon and held up her handiwork. The wreath was slightly thinner than the ones for the doors, mostly made of vines rather than twigs, and thin bits of gold tinsel shreds wove through it, reflecting the light like tiny pieces of jewellery. From between the blue-green fir leaves, dark green holly leaves contrasted against their brilliant red berries, almost the same colour as his hair. "Here," she said. "Put it on."

"Do I get one?" Klaus asked as Wales took the wreath from her and put it on his head.

"Of course," she said. "No, Wales, it's tilted – there, that's right."

Wales tilted his chair back to spot his reflection in the dark window. " _Nice,_ " he said. "This is really cool, Sophie!"

Klaus' wreath wasn't the same as Wales' one – his was mostly made of dark fir and willow, set with tiny, silver-painted fir cones and even tinier baubles. In the light from the chandelier, it looked almost black. He put it on himself with great ceremony, and then immediately went off to find a proper mirror.

"Don't you have one, Sophie?" Wales asked, and in answer she picked up one that was almost identical to his, except that where he had holly woven through his, she had oak and mistletoe, with its white berries matching her hair. "Very appropriate," he grinned. "It looks good on you."

"Now I understand the one you made this morning," Klaus said, stepping back into the room. "That was Konzern's, wasn't it?"

Sophie nodded and stood up, going over to the side where the spray-painted fir cones had been left to dry. "Here," she said, and picked up the last wreath and placed it on Julian's head.

Unlike the others, there were no fir cones or baubles or ribbons in this wreath. It was made entirely from leaves and branches, woven together expertly into a crown and then painted gold, like the laurel-wreaths of ancient Rome. A suitable wreath for the Emperor of Europe. Even with so slight a weight added, Julian automatically held his head higher and stood straighter, regal in his victor's crown.

Sophie glanced at the other two, looking equally noble in their black and fir-blue wreaths, and decided enough was enough.

"And now," she said, as grandly as only she could but grinning all the while, " _sledging."_

.

Her teammates always said they never knew what to expect when they showed up at Sophie's house.

They certainly hadn't expected to spend the dark winter's evening running around outside her house in the snow, wearing wreaths she had made for each of them on their heads, careening up and down the hills and contours of the garden on three sledges and generally _not_ acting like the ridiculously wealthy European heirs they were. She was the last person any of them would have expected to even own three sledges, even if she did live near the Alps., and certainly the last person to suggest _playing_ on them.

Wales flopped down on the snow, his wreath knocked over one eye, laughing helplessly. "This is the most ridiculous thing we've ever done, and that includes what happened on Julian's boat last summer."

"I thought we'd agreed to never speak of that again," said Julian sternly, but as he had a large amount of snow in his hair the impression wasn't quite as severe as it could have been.

"I said nothing about what actually happened. And anyway, we were all there, it doesn't matter that much."

"I am never allowing any of you back on any of my boats ever again."

"Not even the dinghy?" Klaus looked barely more dignified than Wales; he had lost his wreath several times and was now wearing it on his upper arm.

"Even the dinghy," Julian confirmed, just before Wales sat up, grabbed him around the knees and pulled him over into the snow. " _WALES!"_

Sophie collapsed gracelessly into the snow next to her three teammates, not caring for a second how she looked. This was the first fun she had had in weeks. Yet somehow she got the feeling that even if they had still been inside, making wreaths or tidying up the mess they'd made, or eating dinner, or training, she would still be having fun.

It was very hard not to have fun when she had all of her team with her. Victors and royalty and heirs and champions they might be, wearing crowns even in the snow, but ever since they had come home from Spiral City as a proper team, it was impossible not to have fun with them.

Klaus got to his feet and grabbed the tow ropes of the three sledges. "Hey," he said. "Climb on. I'll drag you all back up to the top of the hill."

Sophie had never thought she would be sitting on a sledge next to Julian Konzern, being pulled up a snowy slope by Klaus, wearing a fir-and-mistletoe wreath she had made herself. She put a hand up to her wreath only to feel it coming undone. Moments later, though, Wales had noticed and was already working to fix it, using a loose strand from his own wreath to tie it together more firmly.

Yes, she thought. As long as she had these three with her, there was nothing she couldn't do.


	6. Ribbons & Sleigh Bells

_This one is specially for resplandorrosa626, who has been so lovely to me in reviews and PMs, and who adores Motti. It is a little shorter than some of the others, though in my defence I never meant the previous chapters to go beyond 1000 words each, and yet Aguma's is the shortest at 1,500 words. Oops._

 _Also I have no idea where this idea came from, it just kind of materialised itself at about 10pm, and was pretty much written by midnight. Thanks, plot bunny. Or plot kitty, technically._

* * *

 **Motti**

Christmas Day was just like any other day for Motti. It was a business day for her, and in fact it was busier than usual thanks to the national holiday on the 23rd and the general rush on Christmas Eve. It was probably going to be just as busy again today.

Unlocking the back door of the cafe, she had barely taken a step when seven cats swarmed her, meowing happily.

"Okay, okay, miaow," she told them. "I'll feed you if you let me move!"

Setting up the shop for the day was a matter of routine now – she had opened it nearly three years ago once all of the mess from the Nemesis Crisis had been cleared up and some of the shopping estates were starting to open up again. She had always loved making sweets and cakes, and of course she loved cats, so when she had discovered the concept of a cat café she had jumped at the chance. Now she had a collection of nine cats of various colours and sizes who lived in the shop, and a strong customer base that was there both for the cats and Motti's baked goods.

The first customers of the day were later than usual, a reflection of the busy day the day before – a couple from the next neighbourhood, who both got strawberry shortcake before settling in a corner with the tabby cat, and about half an hour later, the second customer – an older lady who adored the tortoiseshell cat almost as much as she adored Motti's flavoured mochi bites.

Slowly, the café filled up. Motti was kept busy between baking, selling and serving, whilst simultaneously keeping the perpetually-curious black-and-white cat out of the food areas. When a man and his twin sons came in, she was relieved when they picked the black-and-white to cuddle.

No-one seemed to want to leave too quickly. After all, the café had good food, hot drinks, comfortable seats and cute cats, so why bother going out into the damp winter's day? It was a pleasant, slow way to enjoy Christmas, and Motti liked the way it all felt so cosy. Her decorations, mostly made up of ribbons woven around lights, made the café look particularly nice, with a homely glow to it that it didn't usually have.

"What would you like, miaow?" she asked the next customers, a woman and a young girl in a red dress. The girl had already picked up the ginger cat and was cuddling him tightly.

"Gingerbread!" she piped up, smiling widely and showing a missing tooth on one side. "Like the kitty!"

"Just a coffee for me," the woman said, before turning to her daughter. "We can't stay too long, darling, and be gentle with the cat, he might not like being held like that."

"No, he's okay with it, miaow," Motti said. "Don't do it to the white kitty, though, she doesn't like being held. Just stroke her gently." She bent down to get another plate from under the counter for the gingerbread.

"That's strange," said the woman suddenly. "Why can I hear bells?"

"Bells?"

"Sleigh bells. Listen!"

Motti straightened up and tilted her head to one side to listen more carefully. Sure enough, a faint jingling could be heard from outside, coming closer. Seconds later, the door to the café burst open to reveal -

"It's _Santa!"_ the little girl gasped, tightening her arms around the ginger cat until it yowled and wriggled out.

Motti stared at the newcomer. He was huge, as tall and broad as her door, dressed all in red and carrying a large sack over his shoulder. On his big black boots, a set of little bells jingled every time he took a step.

"Ho ho!" he boomed, and Motti suddenly frowned. That voice sounded very familiar. "Madam Cat, I have brought presents!"

"Presents!" the twins exclaimed together, scrambling to stand in front of 'Santa' with their eyes wide.

That was when Motti suddenly realised what was missing from the picture. 'Santa' didn't have a white beard. In fact, he had a purple one.

" _Manager Benkei_?" she asked incredulously, staring at the owner of the next-door burger restaurant. "What are _you_ doing here, miaow?"

Benkei grinned at her and put a finger on his lips. "I am not Manager Benkei!" he said. "Who is he? I am Santa! And I have brought presents!"

Presents, it turned out, meant a pile of cuddly hamburgers with the Bull Burger logo stamped on the top for the children, and even smaller hamburger keyrings for the adults. All of them had different little expressions on them. Motti picked one up and dangled it from her finger, frowning at the cute smile.

"Manager Benkei, you are advertising in my shop without permission," she said firmly, pulling him to one side as the children dived into the pile of cuddly toys. "Please explain yourself."

Benkei laughed awkwardly, putting a hand up to the back of his head. "Half my staff got sick over the holiday. I can't open today, and I had all these things I was going to give to my customers as presents. So when I saw you were open next door I thought I'd bring them round. That way at least someone gets some use out of them. Oh, and… here. This one's for you, to say thanks for all the help you gave me getting set up this year."

Motti blinked. The box in her hands was larger than one of her own cake boxes, wrapped in bright paper that was covered in tiny cats. She ripped it open, vaguely aware of the tabby cat grabbing the string with a murderous gleam in his eye. Then she gasped and dropped the box onto the table.

It was full to the very top with piles of brilliantly coloured ribbons in every shade she could imagine. Some were plain, some were silky, some were chequered, some were patterned, some had cats, some had Santa hats, some had strawberries, some had katakana for _Merry Christmas_ – some even had tiny burgers on them. Motti plunged her hands into the box and brought them out brimming with strips of material that shimmered under her fairy light display. She _loved_ ribbons. All of her decorations were ribbons, all of her boxes were tied up with ribbons, all of the cat collars were ribbons – and that was before you got to her collection of hair ribbons.

"You like them?" Benkei seemed pleased. "I was thinking about your cats and what they might like to play with, and then I thought they might eat these but I'd already bought them and then I thought _you_ might like them."

Motti looked up at him, hands and forearms overflowing with dozens of ribbons, and beamed. "I _love_ them, miaow!"

She didn't know what she had done to deserve this generosity. Yes, she'd given him a couple of pointers when he had first started setting up his shop next door, but nothing that would have suggested something so dramatic would be required in return.

"We should do a joint event next year," she said suddenly, getting an idea. "You could be a proper Santa outside your shop, and I can make Christmas strawberry cake for everyone. Santa and cute cats, who could possibly resist?"

"It's a deal!" Benkei said, holding out a hand to shake, before heading back to the middle of the café to cuddle the white cat that had apparently fallen in love with his boots.

Motti stepped out from behind the counter to allow the tortoiseshell cat to spring up onto her shoulders, where it immediately began washing its ears with a paw. Who knew, perhaps this one-time alliance between Motti's Mochis and Bull Burger might be just the thing to revitalise their little corner of the shopping district. Christmas might be just another business day, but that didn't mean it had to be the same as every other day.

Motti reached up a hand and stroked the tortoiseshell's head. "Happy Christmas, kitty," she said, and smiled when the cat purred back.

* * *

 _Some explanations, as this may come up in future chapters based in Metal City – Japan doesn't really have Christmas Day as a celebration. The 23rd is the Emperor's birthday, and is a national holiday. Christmas Eve is the busy day, and is more of a couples day, like Valentines. Most businesses are open on Christmas Day, particularly KFC, which is the primary provider of food on Christmas Day!_

 _Also yes Motti has a cat caf_ _é next door to Bull Burger. It is called Motti's Mochis. Do not question me on this._


	7. Gifts & Family

_Another shout-out to respl_ _a_ _ndorrosa626 today (purely by coincidence, the order of the characters was decided by random number generator) – this time for the story "They Are My Boys", which provided the initial idea spark._

 _And after saying yesterday that I wanted to make the chapters shorter from now on, this is the longest one yet._

* * *

 **Ryo**

For most of his life, Ryo had been certain that one child was quite enough for him. Before Gingka had been born, he had sometimes wondered how many he would like, and had generally settled on one, maybe two. But after Gingka's mother had… well, afterwards, Gingka was all he wanted.

So he was a little bit blindsided by the novel situation of having _ten_.

Okay, they weren't all actually his descendants. Gingka was still his only blood relative. But with the Nemesis Crisis leaving homes shattered and families scattered, Ryo had suddenly found himself in charge of a large office block now masquerading as a family home for most of the Legendary Bladers and their friends who had nowhere else to go.

Madoka had her family, as did Kenta, but Hikaru's last living relative had been killed in the Crisis and Benkei's house was in ruins. Yuu had never had a proper home to live in, and though Tsubasa's family were safe in Canada, he hadn't returned home to them. Kyouya wasn't going anywhere until Madoka had finished fixing Leone, Chris had never had anywhere to go, and Dynamis seemed strangely loath to return to his cold, empty mountain. Tithi and Yuki had shrugged when Ryo asked them what their plans for the holiday were – neither of them had any family to return to now either.

They weren't _his_ children, but they were his _children_. Maybe they had just saved the world from a literal god, maybe they had seen death and destruction and battles the likes of which Ryo had never imagined, maybe they were chosen by some unseen force or will that guided the fate of the world from above, but... Tithi was _eight_. Even the oldest of the Legendary Bladers, Aguma, was barely eighteen. Technically an adult, yes, and certainly a leader of his tribe, but Ryo could remember being eighteen. There was still so much he needed to learn about the world at that age.

And so he, more than anyone else in the WBBA Tower, felt the responsibility of getting presents for all those who were staying in the Tower over the holiday. After all, no-one else was going to.

It was Christmas Eve by the time he managed to get all of the presents together, and he was a bit concerned that he wouldn't be able to wrap them in time, but luckily Tsubasa had come up with the idea of a mini tournament that would tire most of them out even if they got back from it before midnight. So Ryo was left alone in the dining hall, surrounded by gifts and wrapping paper and ribbons and tape.

He'd had to be clever. All of the Legendary Bladers and their friends were more mature than their years suggested, and most of them had been travelling around the world solo for years, so anything that suggested that they were incapable or dependant in some way wouldn't do at all. They were children in his eyes, perhaps, but they were becoming men and women – kind, sensitive, honest, proud, good men and women who knew the difference between being right and doing right. His gifts had to reflect that too. And all of them were so individual that a gift had to be _exactly_ right or something would feel wrong about it.

Gingka was easy. Ryo had known him for so long that it was easier to think of something Gingka would like than something Ryo himself would like. With Gingka, the important thing was moving forward but also maintaining the status quo. Gingka always did worst when he lost things that he relied on. The soft white scarf, identical to the one that had been shredded by Nemesis' attacks, folded neatly into a small parcel, wrapped in brown paper and string, just like all the gifts in Koma Village were wrapped.

To his surprise, Tsubasa had also been easy. Then again, Ryo had known him for almost four years, just a little less than the time Tsubasa had been a special agent with the WBBA. Tsubasa generally had access to everything he needed, and wanted very little – someone who travelled as much as he did rarely needed more than the essentials – but there was one thing he unexpectedly treasured. Ryo had only discovered it by accident, whilst Tsubasa had been trying to track down the Legendary Bladers across the world. An eagle might fly high and lofty and lonely in the sky, but Tsubasa was more human that that, and in some situations still doubted his own choices. Before the Darkness had taken him, he had never shown any lack of faith in his decisions, and Ryo would happily have brought the whole gang of evil-doers back just to punish them for what had happened to Tsubasa's confidence. But for now, he wrapped a solar-powered mobile phone charger in a small box and put it in a red bag. That way, Tsubasa could always ask for help when he needed it.

Of course, apart from Gingka he knew Hikaru the best. She was as loyal to him as anyone, even if he knew he exasperated her at times. It still wasn't clear if she would ever go back to blading in a fighter's capacity, even now, so it looked like they would be working together for a while. She had first arrived in his office fragile and fierce, sharp and shattered as broken glass, and perhaps he had played up the Immortal Phoenix line a few times to distract her from her own dark thoughts. He knew his responsibilities towards her as her employer, and where he had to draw the line between professionalism and caring, but that didn't make it any easier to see when memories of shadow crept up on her, or when sleep eluded her all night. He couldn't give her anything too personal – that would be weird. But she really was like a daughter to him, one of the few girls who had fought to the top of her sport with all her might, and left everything on the battlefield, including, in the end, her confidence and fearlessness. Yet still she came back, time and time again, helping in every way she could and never complaining. In the end, he filled a shoebox with dozens of candles of every shape and size, from tealights to pillar candles that would burn for more than fifty hours. After all, of everyone he knew, she was the one who embodied the wish to light a single candle rather than curse the dark.

Chris was strangely easy. He wasn't one who needed reassurances or care to know what his role in the world was. He just asked to be pointed at the nearest battle and let loose. The thing that held him back was always the way others saw him – seeing a child before they saw the warrior – and Ryo had to work hard to keep in mind that Chris had been a blader-for-hire, a mercenary, before he joined Gingka's little group. Whether or not Gingka's special talent for bringing people to realise the true heart of blading had caught him or not, Chris' job was to blade for others in order to make enough money to survive. Taking that away from him by suddenly providing him with everything he might need would be worse than punishment. But there were other ways to help, and a silver envelope with Chris' name on it now stood among the wrapped parcels, containing a slip of paper confirming Chris as the WBBA's newest special agent, with a reliable income and a supervised workload of useful jobs that made someone with his background into an invaluable asset. Chris would never have to take jobs that risked his blade or his life just to continue to stay alive, but he wouldn't be accepting charity either.

Yuki, on the other hand, was more difficult. Ryo couldn't exactly get him a telescope or something unthinking like that. Unlike Gingka, he was only loosely tied to the past – reminders were painful rather than strengthening, and he kept his eyes on the far horizon, looking forward to new things. But he still wanted that sense of security that only the familiar could bring. So far in the Tower, he seemed to have found that by stargazing on the roof with Dynamis every clear night, but it was clear he wanted something new to focus on now that the Star he had spent his life tracking had arrived and its purpose fulfilled. It wasn't until he saw the way the young blader reacted to the Koma Village Punch Bowl tradition, and his enthusiasm in setting up his own new-old tradition with his family's Yule Clog that Ryo had realised what Yuki actually wanted, and sent a message to Hokuto and Hyoma. The book of traditional tales and legends of Koma Village and how they entwined with the history of beyblading arrived a few days later, and Ryo wrapped it in dark blue paper covered in tiny white snowflakes like stars.

The others weren't much easier. If Ryo hadn't been so familiar with Gingka's outgoing nature, he might have been taken in by Benkei's constant enthusiasm. It was easy to assume that his energy and drive were a permanent state of mind, but Ryo had been there on the day that Benkei had been left behind by the helicopter carrying Kyouya and the other Legendary Bladers to King Hades' Island for the final showdown, and had seen that façade crack into concern and fear for all of his friends as he realised exactly what it meant to face the God of Destruction. Benkei wasn't like Yuu, constantly on the go, constantly looking for new experiences. But what he did have was a generosity of spirit that was unmatched in any other blader Ryo knew. Benkei gave everything. Time, food, protection, care, love – he gave all of it fully and willingly to everyone he befriended, expecting nothing in return. It was humbling. Finding a gift to support such a heart wasn't easy, and Ryo was on the brink of actually asking Kyouya for an idea when he realised how foolish he was being. The best way to make Benkei happy was to let him make other people happy, to support his dreams and give little nudges from the side – and to let him cook. The slim folder wrapped in red paper with Benkei's name on it held nearly a month's worth of cooking lessons from the best chefs of every sort in Metal City and the two neighbouring cities, and Ryo had a feeling that Metal City was going to get a new restaurant in the near future.

Ryo stretched, his fingers cramping from wrapping the gifts. From way above his head, he could just about make out the sounds of battle going on – by the volume of the roars, it sounded like Kyouya and Yuu were battling. Ryo smiled to himself as he picked up the next two parcels.

Yuu and Tithi, the youngest ones remaining in the Tower, had been particularly interesting to pick presents for. They were both so similar in outlook and yet somehow so very different. Yuu was even more independent than Tsubasa, happy to go off on his own training journeys alone despite his lack of years, whilst the even-younger Tithi was desperate to stay with the friends he had only just found. Ryo thought of them like two young birds, one fledged and just needing a slight push out of the nest to soar into the sky and the other still needing to learn how to fly. So he wrapped up a set of camping pots and pans that stacked neatly inside each other in gold paper for Yuu, to support him as he moved out into the world on his own, and – similar to Tsubasa's gift – a mobile phone and charger wrapped in green paper for Tithi, to let him know he never had to be alone again.

Then there was Dynamis, proud, precognitive Dynamis with both eyes on the heavens and feet barely on the earth. He was not someone Ryo had ever expected to consider as his family. But Gingka just absorbed him into the ranks, as Gingka always did, and suddenly Ryo found himself with yet another son, this one even more mature than Aguma and possibly even older. The young man never actually told them his age; Ryo guessed about sixteen from his looks, but some of the phrases that Dynamis came out with made him seem far, far older. Considering Dynamis' vast knowledge, it was difficult to pick out something useful, until Gingka mentioned in an off-hand comment how cold it was on the top of Mist Mountain. Ryo did the research and eventually managed to find exactly what he wanted – a massive blanket woven in midnight blue wool with all the constellations of the sky strewn across it in their rightful places, so that no matter where he went, Dynamis would always sleep under the stars.

And then at last, he had to think of something for Kyouya.

Kyouya didn't _need_ presents. If he didn't have something he needed, he got it himself. It he didn't have something he wanted, he earned it himself. The Lone Lion never accepted help. He was ferociously proud and independent, and Ryo had to think long and hard about what he could give the powerful young man who was his son's greatest rival. Something to help him survive in the wilds? No, Kyouya was too tough to want help. Something to improve his skills? No, Kyouya rejected anything that wasn't his own pure form of training. Something like Tithi or Tsubasa's gifts, letting him stay in touch with the others? No, Kyouya was too proud and individual to want to interact like that. A book on the history of blading? That was laughable – Kyouya read only when he had to. A blade repair kit? Basically useless with Madoka around.

No, there was only one thing Kyouya really wanted, and that was to fight strong opponents like Gingka. That wasn't a gift Ryo could give. Really, he was so much like Gingka in his way that it was funny -

Of course. It was obvious once he'd thought it. Kyouya might want to forge ahead, but he too was tied to his past, constantly returning to Gingka, Madoka, Benkei and Kenta like a planet orbiting a star. Despite himself, he always came back to the ones who had first set him on his path. Kyouya didn't need something to fall back on, though. He needed something strong to spring forward from.

So the little box with Kyouya's name on the label held a key to a small wooden house high in the mountains, the third of three keys to the Hagane family house. If Kyouya was family now, more than a friend to Gingka and more like a brother, then he more than any of the others had a right to that key, and to the place where Gingka would be found when he could be found nowhere else in the world.

Ryo looked at the pile of presents in front of him. Yes. These would do quite nicely for his children. These were the gifts that would let them stride forward out of the darkness and make new paths for themselves in this new world.

He wasn't expecting any of them to get him presents. They wouldn't be expecting any from him, after all – this was all a surprise. Then again, he thought, he hardly needed _things_. The best gift of all was that they were all there, safe and warm and (relatively) happy, free to be children one more time before the world called them to be leaders.

.

When Christmas morning rolled around and Gingka, wearing the new scarf as well as a pair of antlers (courtesy of Yuu), hugged him and mumbled _"Thanks, Dad,_ " into his shoulder, that was all the present that he needed.

When Tithi and Yuki did the same thing a few minutes later, Ryo wasn't sure whether he wanted to smile or cry.


	8. Cards & Season

**Madoka**

Christmas was Madoka's favourite season. And yes, it was a season in its own right. Everything felt different – people were a bit brighter, the air was a bit crisper, everything felt lighter than the dismal, dreary days of January and February before spring really arrived.

It always started the same way for her – a stack of blank cards on her workbench, ready to be written up and sent all across the world to all of her friends.

Some of them she had to make sure she did early, in order for them to arrive before her Jewish friends had finished celebrating Hanukkah. In fact, most of the cards were for school friends who had moved away from Metal City since finishing, and so she rarely saw them. It was a chance to catch up with what everyone was doing (she was far too busy to have any kind of social media life).

But the cards she always enjoyed writing the most were the ones to her friends around the globe who had come into her life through beyblade, though actually getting the cards to said friends was often difficult at best and outright impossible at worst.

Madoka leaned back in her chair and mentally ticked off the list of bladers for whom she had no address at all. Gingka hadn't been seen in nearly four years, and neither had Kyouya. No-one knew the whereabouts of Yuu either, which was somewhat concerning as he hadn't actually said what he was doing before he vanished. Cards to Bao and Aguma were hopeless – asking the Chinese post to find "The Winter Fortress, Somewhere In The Mountains" was never going to get anywhere, and whilst Da Shan was willing to take emergency messages over to them like "hey so someone's trying to destroy the world again can we have Aguma back", forwarding Christmas cards seemed a little bit pedestrian. So Madoka didn't write to them at all.

Julian Konzern and his team didn't exactly give out their home addresses to many people, but at least once she was friendly enough to warrant finding out this information the post was pretty reliable. Their cards were written in careful English, with many checks on the spellings and the grammar before she sealed the envelope. They tended to only have a short greeting and a hope to see the Europeans in the coming year.

Masamune always forgot to update his home address with the WBBA, and so Madoka just sent a pack of cards to the Dungeon Gym for all of Team Dungeon, with cards for King and Chris also enclosed in the hopes that one of the team would have more accurate information on their whereabouts. Those cards were also in English, but with a little more Japanese thrown in when Madoka didn't know the word, and merrily recalled the most important events that the American bladers had missed.

Kenta, Benkei and Hyoma actually had proper home addresses, but they were relatively close by so the cards just contained a greeting and a wish for a happy new year. Hikaru and Tsubasa's cards just got posted in the internal mail at the WBBA. Those cards were short too, though if Tsubasa had been looking too grim for too long Madoka tried to include an inside joke to make him smile.

And every day, almost, there would be a new envelope on her doormat when she opened the shop in the morning, with another friend writing a card back saying yes of _course_ they had to meet up in the coming year (they wouldn't, and both of them knew it, but it was nice to pretend), or Kenta sending back a card with a small gift attached (she always told him not to, and he always ignored her), or Team Excalibur writing an extended essay in nearly-perfect Japanese to explain just how many more awards Julian had managed to win that year (surprisingly, the number had dropped in the past few years).

Writing the cards took a surprisingly long time, so Madoka usually set aside a specific night to write them all. Even though Kenta had come by with a rather battered Sagittario that afternoon ("I was training!" he explained, embarrassed. "And I kind of knocked a wall down on top of Flash Sagittario. Sorry.") she had put her usual repair work to one side for the night and set about working her way down the list.

A clatter upstairs disturbed her as she was writing the address on the seventh card she had finished that night, and she put down her pen with a frown. It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to break in to her shop, but would-be thieves tended to underestimate the mechanic with a knack for knowing exactly which tool hurt the most when pressed into sensitive areas, and so she had never lost anything too valuable. But someone breaking in during December was always bad news.

When she got to the top of the stairs, however, the motion-sensitive lights were still off. Nothing in the shop had been disturbed, and even when she waved to bring the lights up, there was no-one there that she could see. Just in case, she unlocked the front door and stepped outside to make sure that the shutter on the main window display hadn't been damaged.

Nothing. Or – no, not quite nothing. Between two of the slats, something white was flapping in the wind. Madoka pulled it out, half expecting a challenge letter (it would not be the first time that someone had attached a challenge letter to her shop even if they were not for her), only to find herself holding an envelope with her name neatly printed across the front.

Who would deliver a Christmas card at this time?

She retreated into her shop, locking up again and heading back to her basement workshop. Once there, she pushed her pile of unwritten cards to the side and carefully slit open the envelope.

It _was_ a Christmas card. No surprises there. On the front of the card was a picture of a snowy mountain, covered in glitter and with a small sleigh pulled by reindeer flying over it. A hand-written note was next to an arrow pointing at the sleigh that read _ME._

That was even more confusing than the fact the card had been stuck on her shutters. Confused and slightly alarmed, Madoka opened the card to reveal painfully familiar handwriting.

 _My dear Madoka,_

 _I'm sorry, I can't stay for long, not even long enough to say hello. Something vitally important has come up and I happened to be travelling through the area so I thought I'd drop this off on a 'flying visit', like Santa – you don't see me, just the evidence I've been here._

 _I hope you are doing fine. I've been trying to keep on top of beyblading news but it's pretty difficult without being in the tournament circuits. I often think of you and your amazing cake at this time of year. I miss being around everyone, but I can't come back just yet._

 _I want you to know that I am safe and well. I'm still working on dismantling the last bits of Hades Inc, and there's still so much more to do before I know the world is safe from them and their ambitions, so I hope you can forgive me that once again I won't be able to come back to Metal City for Christmas._

 _There's so much more I want to tell you, but I'm out of room. I'm hoping that I'll get all of this wrapped up by summer and then I'll make sure to come back._

 _Wishing you a very happy Christmas, and the best new year you've ever had,_

 _Yours always,_

 _Gingka H._

 _P.S. I'd just finished this when I bumped in to Yuu Tendo of all people. He says hi too, but don't tell Tsubasa he's in the area, he wants it to be a surprise…_

Madoka let out a ghost of a laugh. Oh _Gingka._ It was good to hear from him, to know that he was alive at least. Not that his card really gave her much more information on his movements than that. She wondered if he had dropped off cards at Kenta's old address or at the WBBA tower too, and decided to open up late the next morning so that she could go and find out. If Gingka's post-script was correct, she might even end up running in to Yuu, which would certainly brighten her week up.

He'd managed one thing, anyway. With the knowledge that he was alive and well and nearly at the end of his mammoth quest to hunt out the last remnants of the companies that had caused all his friends so much pain, it was going to be a very happy Christmas indeed.

Madoka propped the card up over her workbench where she would be able to see it whenever she looked up, and then went back up the steps to grab her shopping list and add a few more things on to it.

After all, if Yuu was going to be coming by for Christmas, she was probably going to need some more food…

Christmas was always a season of surprises. That was why she liked it so much.


	9. Tinsel & Stars

**Kenta**

"Whoa, you've decorated!" Kenta exclaimed as Masamune opened the door to the front room to reveal what could only be described as an explosion of tinsel. "Um… is there even a tree under there?"

"Of course there is," Masamune laughed, taking Kenta's bag and throwing it on the sofa. "HEY, ZEO! TOBY! KENTA'S HERE!"

A loud slam from above their heads was followed almost immediately by running feet coming down the stairs, and ten seconds later Zeo and Toby all but tumbled into the room.

"Hey, Kenta!" Toby said, smiling broadly. "Welcome to America!"

"And Happy Christmas," Zeo added.

"Thanks," said Kenta, confused. "But… it's the nineteenth?"

"Yeah but it's less than a week, it's basically Christmas here now," Toby shrugged. "Hey, I'll take your bag, let me show you your room. Masamune, did you remember to get food when you were collecting Kenta?"

"...nooooooo," Masamune squeaked, and Zeo rolled his eyes.

"Go on, I'm not getting Chinese again just because you forgot to get groceries. Come on, Kenta. Masamune, get going! The shops shut in an hour, it's a Saturday, remember!"

Masamune shot back out of the door with a yelp, and Toby laughed. "Sorry about that, Kenta. This way." He led Kenta to the stairs, where the banisters were almost as swamped with tinsel as the tree had been.

"Is everywhere this… tinselly?" Kenta asked, blinking to get the flickers of light out of his eyes. Zeo sighed.

"Tinsel is Masamune's favourite, and it was his turn to decorate this year. He says it doesn't feel like Christmas without piles of it all over the place. So yes, pretty much everywhere. Take it down in your room if you don't like it. I think he even put it in the bathroom."

Kenta shook his head. "It's okay, it looks really festive, it's just… a lot. We don't really decorate like this in Japan."

Toby was giving him a sideways sort of look. "Masamune said you didn't want to stay in Japan for Christmas? Why?"

Ah. This question already. Kenta opened his mouth to give the answer he had rehearsed - _I wanted to see how other places did Christmas, there's a tournament here just after Christmas,_ _it's nice to see other friends sometimes_ _–_ except what came out was "I just didn't want to talk about Gingka and Ryuga for once."  
Zeo and Toby both froze. The silence stretched between them, difficult and uncomfortable. Of course, they weren't quite as familiar with the history surrounding those two and the other Legendary Bladers as Kenta was, despite the fact that King basically lived with them now and Chris regularly dropped by. They weren't in the cohort who had faced Ryuga in Battle Bladers, or seen him come to Tsubasa's aid when the Darkness threatened to take him away from them too, or seen him in King Hades' Temple – no, Kenta didn't want to think about that, not at this time of year.

Christmas was always a weird period for the Legendary Bladers. Nemesis had risen on the Winter Solstice, when the daylight was shortest and the night the longest, December 22nd, and so every year when the rest of the world lit up with tinsel and lights and hope, the Legendary Bladers and those who had travelled so far with them tended to gather together and remember the darkness they had faced, and the one they had lost. It made the Christmas season uncomfortable at best, and whenever they gathered together at this time of year, someone would always start talking about Ryuga, and Kenta just… didn't want to go back through the memories again. It was difficult enough when he still got flashbacks during storms if lightning struck too close by, let alone deliberately bringing it up.

It had actually got worse when Gingka had disappeared on the second anniversary and hadn't come back. Now everyone talked about where he might have gone, or why, or when he might come back. It was exhausting trying to forget the grief, the pain, the sense that he had been _abandoned_ right when he needed both of them.

So this year, Kenta had decided to take a break, and go to America for Christmas, where there were no Legendary Bladers to meet up, and no-one to wince when they remembered several minutes too late into their reminiscence about Ryuga that at least one person in the room (two if Yuu was there as well) missed more about the Dragon Emperor than his mighty strength and formidable skill.

"Sorry," said Zeo suddenly, breaking the silence and snapping Kenta's attention back to the present. "That was awkward. Um. Let's not mention that again."

"This is your room," Toby interrupted, pushing open a door at the top of the second landing. "I think – yes, Masamune's definitely been in here too. You know, I have no idea where he managed to find this much tinsel."

Toby was right. The room was… dazzling, if that was the right word. Tinsel hung from almost every available surface, the edges of it scattering light from the fairy lights that were strewn across every shelf and mirror.

"… I think I need to have a word with Masamune when he gets back about suitable levels of decoration," Zeo said. "He's not normally this… enthusiastic, if I'm honest."

"Must have been because you were coming over," Toby suggested. "Anyway, you probably want to unpack and unwind a bit. Dinner will be about an hour after Masamune gets back again, I'm afraid, but if you want food before then just come and find one of us."

"And remember you can take down any decorations that you don't want," Zeo added, giving the room a look of slight distaste. "This is over the top even for him."

Kenta shook his head. "I said it's fine."

It… really wasn't, not when he got a proper look. Tinsel was _everywhere._ Kenta was pretty certain the bit on the bed was actually meant to be there, rather than having fallen off of something, simply because he couldn't see any gaps where it might have fallen from. Gingerly, he perched himself on the edge of the bed, his bag at his feet.

The tinsel shimmered in the fairy lights, the tiny strands waving in the updraught from the radiator. The flickers of light caught in the corner of Kenta's vision like the stray embers of a campfire on the edge of a mountain deep in Japan that held a prototype Pegasus – the last time Kenta had spent the night out of door with Gingka. That had been in summer, and the little group had laid on their backs with the fire burning beside them, and pointed out their constellations overhead. Kenta had waved at Sagittarius, and liked to imagine he saw a shooting star like a wave back. Gingka had been a little bit upset when Pegasus wasn't there, being an autumn constellation, and instead had pointed out where Draco snaked across the whole sky.

"He's still out there somewhere," he had sighed. "I'll bet anything he's repairing Lighting L-Drago and then he'll come back. As long as his stars are in the sky, he's not going to go anywhere."

Kenta had remembered those words next to another campfire a year or so later, when the sparks that were rising around him weren't embers but the stranger flashes of tiny lightning-sparks, as red as Dark Bull and nothing compared to the flashing anger in the golden eyes he dared not look away from. No, Ryuga wasn't going anywhere, not whilst Draco was in the sky, rising to its meridian in the heights of summer.

But when it faded away into the winter sky, so had the last and greatest of the people who had trained Kenta into the man he was today.

The silver tinsel over the door caught in a draught as someone opened the front door, and once again Kenta was dazzled by the reflected lights. The spots remained in his vision even when he blinked, dozens of stars that were still there when he closed his eyes.

 _Circumpolar_ , that's what they called Draco. It swung around the northern sky, sometimes bright and sometimes dim, but always, always there, stretching across vast swathes of the night.

Kenta took a breath and started unpacking his bag. He'd been right to come here. He still didn't want to talk about where Gingka might have gone (and if Masamune tried to ask, Kenta had a plan to rope Zeo and Toby into throwing something at him), and having a Solstice without thinking of Ryuga and the Darkest Day was never going to happen.

But maybe with the distance of both time and physical location, he could think of them a little more fondly.

Sure, there was too much tinsel in the house, just as there were too many memories back in Japan. Having too much of something, even something he treasured, was never good. But tinsel shone like stars, and some people liked it more than others. Some people needed it for it to feel like Christmas at all.

 _Next year,_ he promised himself. _Next year, I'll actually stay and talk instead of leaving as soon as someone mentions Gingka or Ryuga. Just because it's too much for me right now, doesn't mean it's not a way of celebrating for someone else. And maybe one day the light will shine off the memories once more, and they'll be beautiful again._


	10. Gingerbread & Candy Canes

_Something a bit more light-hearted after yesterday's fic! I seem to be incapable of writing Team Wild Fang at Christmas without getting them all into mischief. There are call-backs to several scenes from An Inadvertent Advent, unsurprisingly considering that Nile managed to get gingerbread as one of his words…_

* * *

 **Nile**

Three jobs.

That's all he had to do. Three jobs. If he could just manage to get those done, Christmas/Yule/Hanukkah/Solstice (what were they celebrating again?) would go off pretty much without a hitch. Which, considering that they were Team Wild Fang and chaos always seemed to follow them around at this time of year, would be a first.

Job number one: clear out the spare room. Jokes about bunk beds and sleeping in the wilds aside, there really wasn't room enough in his house for Benkei, Demure and Kyouya unless the spare bed was accessible, and Nile had spent enough time around his team to know that a sleep-deprived Kyouya was no-one's idea of fun.

Job number two: make sure there is enough fuel in the generator to at least run the heaters, if not the lights. Nile's house could be crushingly cold in the winter season, and whilst he was used to basically hibernating in the kitchen for three months of the year, giving his team-mates frostbite at Christmas time was a pretty good way to ruin it for everyone.

Job number three: _don't let my team-mates find the gingerbread._

That was the job he was looking forward to the least. Between Demure's eyesight that could spot a grain of flour at fifty paces, Benkei's talent for discovering food in strange places and Kyouya's somewhat unnerving ability to know when Nile was hiding something, this was going to be interesting.

And he had the grand total of three hours before Team Wild Fang descended on his home.

Okay, easy one first – checking the fuel. He'd bought extra, so it was easy enough to make sure that the generator had been topped up fully, which would be at least a week's supply unless they went crazy with the heating.

The spare room was… less easy. By the time he had managed to clear it enough that three people could sleep in there, he only had half an hour before Demure's plane was due in, which coincidentally was exactly the length of time it took to walk to the airport. Panicking just a little bit, he stuck the box of gingerbread on the top shelf of the larder, figuring that he could always move it to his sock drawer when he got back.

.

Demure took a deep breath as soon as he walked in through the door, and then his face fell a bit. "Oh, that's a shame," he said.

"What?"

"I was hoping to smell ginger. I've been daydreaming about your grandmother's gingerbread for _weeks._ "

Nile pretended to be affronted. "You think I'd cook _my grandmother's famous gingerbread_ for a bunch of ragamuffins like _you_?"

"What's a ragamuffin?" Kyouya asked, rolling the word around in his mouth. "It sounds rude, I like it."

Nile shrugged. "It's something the foreign tourists used to yell at me and my brothers when we were children and they thought we were in their way. It's English, I think. And yeah, probably rude. I never bothered to find out what it meant."

" _Ragamuffin_ ," Kyouya said again, this time with relish, and Nile laughed at the pleased look on his face.

"But no gingerbread?" Benkei said, unfortunately getting the conversation back on track. "Oh."

The gingerbread was their Solstice present, not that Nile needed them to know that. "Nope. No ginger left." That was also true.

"I forgot how much I like your house," Demure said, trailing a hand across the woven panels Nile had put up around the walls to keep the chill out. "It's just like being in our tents, a little home from home."

Nile spread his arms out. "Make yourselves at home," he said. "I'm going to the market to grab some vegetables."

"I'll come with you," Kyouya volunteered, surprisingly. "I've been sat on that plane for hours, I need to move."

"There's food in the larder," Nile told the other two. "If you set the table, I can get everything ready as soon as I get back so you can eat."

It was only as he closed the door behind him that he remembered where he had hidden the gingerbread. Surely it would be fine, though? It was on the very top shelf, hidden behind the jars of preserved vegetables. No-one could grab that without the step he'd used, which was hidden in the kitchen.

No such luck.

When he opened the door an hour later, a bag of vegetables slung over his arm and Kyouya behind him carrying a small sack of bread, the first thing he saw was the box of gingerbread in the middle of the table, and Demure with half of a gingerbread giraffe in his mouth.

Nile could neither hide his expression nor the box. _Oh dear._

"Nile," said Kyouya sternly as he took in the scene, putting the bread down on the sofa. "I thought you said there was no gingerbread."

Nile gave up. There was no hope of keeping secrets with these guys anyway. They knew him so well. "That _was_ your Solstice present. I thought I'd hidden it on the top shelf, I forgot how tall Benkei is."

"...oops," said Demure around his mouthful, and swallowed. "I'm so sorry, Nile, I thought you'd just forgotten about it and it's _so_ good I couldn't help it."

Nile sighed. "I did tell you to make yourselves at home," he said. "I guess that means helping yourself to what's in my larder."

"We can always make more," Benkei suggested. "Unless you were telling the truth about having no ginger."

Kyouya and Nile both gave him a nearly identical look of horror. "Benkei, don't you remember what happened the last time we tried to make gingerbread? We nearly set fire to Gingka's house and two of us got locked in a wardrobe for _four hours._ "

"Oh yeah." Benkei's eyes went wide. "That was a brilliant Christmas, but never again."

"I still can't believe how many people we managed to fit into Gingka's front room for the present swap."

"Oh, presents!" Benkei suddenly exclaimed. "I've got a present I was meant to give you, Nile, hang on."

That was odd. Benkei didn't usually get Nile gifts. "You didn't have to -" he began, but Benkei was already digging around in his bag. Finally, he pulled out a strange, curved, white stick with red stripes running diagonally through it. Nile gave the strange thing a closer look. He'd seen pictures of them before, of course, hung over the branches of Christmas trees in America. But why had Benkei thought he might like one?

"It's a candy cane," Benkei explained, when he realised why Nile was giving it such a strange look. "They're a traditional sweet in America and Europe, King brought some over the last time he visited Japan and I thought you'd like to try them because you love mint so much and they're mint flavour."

Still not entirely reassured, Nile took the cane from Benkei and put the end into his mouth.

It… didn't really taste of anything, much to his surprise. It certainly didn't taste sweet, or of mint. Perhaps there was a coating that had to dissolve off first? He really couldn't see the appeal – the 'sweet' was slippery and an awkward shape and just… tasteless.

"What's wrong, Nile?" Demure asked.

"People _eat_ these?" Nile grumbled. "They don't taste of anything."

Benkei frowned. "That's weird," he said. "They're meant to taste of peppermint."

Nile shook his head. "It just tastes… odd," he said.

Demure suddenly burst out laughing. "I know what the problem is," he said. "You haven't taken the wrapper off."

Nile blinked. Then he slowly took the cane out of his mouth and gave it a closer examination. Demure was right. The whole thing was shrink-wrapped so tightly that he hadn't even noticed that he was actually trying to eat plastic. "What's the point of that?" he muttered, biting through it until he could pull the whole thing off and stick it back in his mouth.

The first thing to hit his tongue was sugar. Okay, he already knew that the whole thing was basically made of sugar, but still. That was a bit of a shock. He didn't like sweets all that much.

The peppermint cut through at last, and Nile raised his eyebrows. Now _that_ was better. It swept through his head like a cool breeze in summer.

"Good?" Benkei asked. Nile took the cane out of his mouth again and gave it an appraising look.

"It's… not _bad,_ " he said hesitantly. "Just… different. I'm not sure what to think. I've never had anything like this before." He offered a smile anyway. "But thanks. I like new things."

"I got the best ones they had in Japan," Benkei told him. "There's cheap ones from America, but they taste wrong, there's almost no mint in them. And I know you don't like sweets much, but you _do_ like mints so I thought you'd like to try them, and I looked it up and you can't get them in Egypt so..."

Nile looked around at his house, so full of people for the first time in months. To his right was Demure, who was leaning back against the mat walls, all-seeing eyes closed and expression blissful as he relaxed in the presence of his team-mates. In front of him was Benkei, generous enough to bring foreign foods into Egypt just so that Nile had the chance to try them, as he could no longer leave the country on his expired passport. And to his left was Kyouya, now happily munching through the enormous gingerbread lion Nile had made for him, relaxed and happy in a way he so rarely was around anyone except his team.

Nile looked around at the only three people he ever really wanted to spend Christmas with. "Okay," he said. "Let's have dinner, then I'll go and get some more ginger. It's about time I taught you the Secret River Nile Gingerbread Recipe anyway, you're basically family at this point considering how much my brothers talk about you. You're not getting more presents though, not if you've eaten them."

Kyouya, mouth full of gingerbread lion, shrugged. "Don't care," he mumbled. "'s good."

Sweets and gingerbread, and a house full of friends and baking. There were worse ways to spend the holidays.


	11. Decorations & Togetherness

_Short and sweet! Finally managed to write something under 1000 words..._

* * *

 **Mei-Mei**

"No."

Mei-Mei did her absolute best impression of a puppy. " _Please?"_

"No. We are an ancient Bey temple in China, Mei-Mei, not an American shop."

"But it'll look so pretty!"

"And I said no. We are not decorating American-style."

"I'm with Mei-Mei on this one," said Chao Xin, poking his head around the door. "Not on the tinsel thing, sure, but we've got all the Americans visiting this year. It would make it more homely for them if they had something they recognised."

"Not you too," Da Shan groaned. "I've seen your capabilities for decorating and I'm not letting you anywhere near tinsel."

Chao Xin stuck his tongue out. "Spoil-sport."

"Chi-Yun is on Da Shan's side," Chi-Yun said from the other door, folding his arms. "We should respect the traditions of this place. The Americans are coming to us, not the other way around. They should recognise our customs, especially as we don't even celebrate their version outside of the big cities."

Mei-Mei looked from one boy to another, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. All she had wanted was to put a plastic Christmas tree up in the corner of the courtyard. And a string of tinsel around each pillar. And lights over the gate.

Okay, maybe that was quite a lot. But they were indeed hosting the American contingent of Masamune, Toby, Zeo, Chris and – weirdly – Tsubasa over the holiday season, and Mei-Mei really wanted them to feel at home, especially the ones who had never been before.

And then Da Shan had refused. And now they were in two camps, Chao Xin and Mei-Mei all for decorating the walls and rooms of the Temple, and Da Shan and Chi-Yun standing their ground.

Da Shan turned to Mei-Mei. "Why is it so important to you that we decorate the Temple?" he asked.

Mei-Mei took a breath. "We want them to be welcome," she said. "If there's nothing that they're used to seeing, they might feel out of place. They're coming to train with us, we should give them something small that they agonise."

Chao Xin laughed. "I think you mean recognise," he said.

"I don't see why it has to be one of their weird green plastic trees," Chi-Yun grumbled. "I don't get their customs."

"That's expactly my point!"

" _Exactly,_ Mei-Mei."

"Exactly my point! We don't get their customs, so why are we expecting them to get ours? Putting some decorations up would give them something familiar."

Da Shan looked like he was actually considering it this time. "A good point, Mei-Mei," he said at last. "But I still don't think it would bring honour to the temple. Like Chi-Yun said, this place is sacred. Putting a cheap plastic tree in the corner won't reflect the history and lineage of this place."

"Look, we're a team, right?" Chao Xin said as Mei-Mei's face fell. "We've done this before. We can compromise and work together, that's what we _do._ That's what we're best at."

"Chi-Yun has an idea," Chi-Yun said suddenly, holding up a traditional red paper lantern. "What about _these?_ "

.

The Temple looked stunning. Da Shan was secretly quite proud of how quickly his bladers had managed to get it ready in the end. Every wall was lined with dozens of traditional lanterns, strung between pillars and casting a warm glow across the whole courtyard. But these were no ordinary lanterns, as the visitors immediately noticed when they finally made it up the mountain.

"Is that _Santa?_ " Masamune asked, pointing at a red lantern with black boots and a white beard painted on.

"We call him Shen Dan Lao Ren," Chao Xin told him. "It means Old Christmas Man. But yes. Basically, that's Santa."

"You've painted all the lanterns," Tsubasa said, sharp eyes noticing details far quicker than the others. "Baubles and Christmas trees and snowmen and… how did you even come up with the idea for this?"  
Mei-Mei smiled. "We worked together," she said proudly.

"It's perfect," Toby breathed. "It fits here with all the tradition, but it's still new and different." He winced suddenly. "Not that I meant that our version of Christmas is better! It's just… I like seeing new things but it's nice to have some callbacks to the old things I'm familiar with too."

"Tradition and moving forwards in one," Da Shan said. "We do it all together." He tilted a half-smile in Mei-Mei's direction. "Eventually."


	12. Ceremony & Lists

**Bao**

Bao did not enjoy the Winter Solstice.

The Winter Solstice Festival of Memory was beautiful and traditional and made up of all the things that kept the tribe together through the cold, hungry months, but it was a real _pain_ to organise.

And that was Bao's job. He was in charge now, so the arrangements for the Festival were his to oversee too.

It had been a week of what could only be described as a mixture of yelling, stress and complaining to Aguma (who was pretty much the only person in the Beylin Fist tribe who would just sit there and listen to everything Bao wanted to say to everyone else but couldn't if he didn't want to start a civil war). Bao was fairly certain that no-one was actually listening to him, or at least were doing their own thing as soon as he turned his back, because there could be no other reason why he'd only managed to tick about three things off on his list of preparations to complete. It didn't matter how good you were at delegating, if the people you picked didn't do their delegated jobs, it was still a huge mess that was going to run up the chain of command and dump the whole lot in Bao's lap, to mix as many metaphors as he had jobs to do.

After separating a pair of squabbling twins who wanted different colour schemes on their family table, redirecting an over-enthusiastic collection of young teenagers armed with beys and mischievous grins to go and get the firewood, and having three circular arguments about exactly the same thing with three different members of the Council, all within the space of an hour, Bao had finally had enough. Silently abandoning the chaos, he went and sat on the bench outside his family's quarters and put his head in his hands. He just needed a minute to _think_ without everyone clamouring for his attention, or doing everything so disastrously wrong that he had to step in personally to rescue it.

Suddenly, something warm and soft dropped over him. Bao took his hands away from his face to find himself in darkness.

"Aguma?" he guessed.

"It'll be fine," Aguma's voice rumbled from above his head. "The Solstice is always like this, you know that."

Bao put a hand out and met cloth. "Aguma, did you just throw a blanket over me?"

"Yes. And it worked. You're not completely absorbed in your own brain any more, are you?"

Bao pulled the rough wool blanket off of his head and looked up at his friend. "You are ridiculous. But thank you."

"No problem. I'm not the one who has to sort everyone out for tomorrow."

"I'm trying not to think about that. I swear none of them are listening to me, and half of them are deliberately getting things wrong. And why do they always come to me with the easy questions they could ask their team leaders?"

This time he got to see Aguma's smile. "First of all, they trust you. That's why they always come to you with the questions. You haven't led us astray yet, and you won't do it this time. Everything always works out in the end. As for whether they're listening, I've just passed a very large group of youngsters dragging in what looks like half a tree, most of the family tables are decorated and the ones that aren't are just waiting for the rest of the cloths to be brought up from the stores, the cooks have informed me that they have a steady stream of volunteers for peeling and chopping vegetables now that the decorations are mostly done in the Hall, the twins have agreed on gold _and_ silver, First Team and Second Team are having a competition to see who can sweep the floors of the Ceremony Hall the fastest, Takafuma is going around collecting the names of those who want to sing their own individual blessings-chant… " His smile got a bit wider. "Does that tick a few things off your list?"

Honestly. Aguma could read him like a book. "Just a few." He shifted along on the bench as Aguma sat down next to him. "I'm sorry. I know it always works out in the end, it's just… if they all did what I asked when I asked, we could have had this done yesterday."

"Where's the fun in that?" Aguma laughed. "And they do listen to you. I say it every year; we're a proud people, we don't like doing things someone else's way. We 're not too good at taking orders, any of us."

Bao held his gaze a fraction longer than usual, knowing what the deeper meaning of those words was all too well. He still hadn't completely forgiven himself for letting Pluto and Johannes control the movements of the Beylin Fist five years previously, as if they were just tools or toys to be used up and discarded.

"And if that doesn't persuade you, _all nine Elders_ insisted I tell you that you're doing your best job yet. Even though this is the biggest one we've ever done."

"Why can't I organise the Summer Solstice Ceremony of Forgetting?" Bao grumbled. "We don't have to decorate for that one."

"That's because we travel during Summer Solstice, you know that, Bao. Now come on. Let's go get food. If we're fast there might even be some dinner left..."

.

Of course Aguma was right. By the time that Bao called everyone together and ordered them all off to bed, pretty much everything on his list had been ticked off at last.

And so, nearly twenty-four hours after Aguma had thrown a blanket over his head to stop him from stressing out so much, Bao found himself in front of the entire Beylin Fist tribe, watching as a group of the younger members enthusiastically went about the traditional re-enactment the day that Beylin Fist had been thrown out of Beylin Temple. With stylised stances and moves that were almost more like dancing than acting, it was a complex sequence that was a ceremony in itself at this point, celebrating the time that the clan had pulled together and made their own way into the future after the main school had refused to understand their ideas. It really hadn't been all that long since Bao had been part of it himself, rather than an observer.

The pageantry was coming to an end. The youngsters playing Beylin Temple all spun around to face away from the main crowd and knelt, hiding their faces from the group playing Beylin Fist to symbolise the way the main school had ignored them as Beylin Fist strode out into the world. With a swirl, a stamp and a shout, the Beylin Fist players formed a solid line, shoulder to shoulder with no gaps between, and faced their leader.

"We are Beylin Fist!" they declared as one. "We are warriors! We will fight the darkness in our own way, and the world will see us as mighty!"

"BEYLIN FIST!" the rest of the hall responded, the traditional ending to the play. But this year there was something new.

It was very odd to watch someone play _him,_ Bao decided, as the older teenagers stepped into the space to begin a ceremonial re-enactment of the Fall of Nemesis, as much as the Beylin Fist had been involved anyway. It was now an important part of their tribe's history of course, and so preserving it in their ceremonies was vital, but there was something very strange about watching _his own story_ play out in ritualised dance-battles in the middle of the Ceremony Hall. Beside him, Aguma shifted slightly closer and Bao risked a glance upwards. It was difficult to read Aguma's expression, but Bao had known him long enough to know when Aguma was feeling the same way he was.

Bao stood up, and the tribe stood as one with him, fanning out to form a loose circle.

"We gather in the darkness," Bao began, speaking the words that so many leaders before him had used. "The winter has reached its depths. Outside, the sun has fallen into shadows. As the fires dim, we remember the year that fades."

"We remember and give thanks," the tribe answered.

All around the hall, the heads of the families began extinguishing all the fires and lanterns and torches until only one remained, in Aguma's hand. Bao took it carefully and held it up, a single light against the dark, a tiny flickering flame. Then, in the breathless silence, he blew it out.

"In the darkness, we await the dawn, _"_ he said, letting his voice ring around the dark hall. "We look to the year that comes, and celebrate the returning of the sun."

"We remember and give thanks," came the ritual response.

Now for the trickiest part of all. Bao swept his beyblade out from under his cloak and launched it in a single explosive movement, sending Hades Crown whirling out into the centre of the hall until it reached the edge of one of the recently-extinguished fires. "Hades Crown, _Flash Attack!"_

The Flash Attack sparked against the wood and instantly ignited it, sending light springing into the roof once more and revealing the faces of his tribe. Fire had been restored. Light had come back from the darkness. Taking a deep breath, Bao began the first lines of the blessings-chant.

" _For sky above and rock beneath,_

 _For shelter, water, food to eat,_

 _For beys that spin and spirits bright,_

 _For days to hold against the night..."_

The words seemed to fade into the walls themselves as the rest of the tribe joined in, the plainsong chant rippling through the hall. One by one, families and individuals stepped forwards with their own offerings of things they wished to give thanks for, from things as small as a lost ring being found to as large as a marriage between two families.

As the voices carried on, Bao thought back to the chants he had once written. Now that he was the one leading the ceremony, he couldn't sing of his own blessings, being the figurehead for the whole tribe instead of an individual for the length of the ceremony, but that didn't mean there weren't things to be thankful for. In fact, there was quite a list.

He had a home. His family were alive. He was alive too, something he had been explicitly thankful for ever since the Nemesis Crisis when he had realised just how fragile his life could be.

His tribe were safe. He was their leader, and despite everything they had actually listened to him in the end, not just on the preparations for the Solstice, but for everything. He had excellent guide in the Elders, and excellent support fro the rest of the adults, so that despite his youth they were willing to follow him wherever he led.

And of course he had Aguma. That was something he was thankful for every year. The more that he stepped into his role as one of the clan leaders, the more he valued his friend's solid, dependable presence at his side, like a reliable shield he could use to keep his sanity safe.

Even as the list of things he could be thankful for expanded in his head, he realised that the sound in the hall was fading away. Right. Time for the last part of the evening, and then all this would be over at last.

"We have sung our songs of thanks," he said, holding out both hands with his palms upwards. "We have acknowledged our history, we have brought our thanks for the year. The night has passed. The morning is near."

The hall was silent. Every eye was on him, every person perfectly still.

"Let us feast in celebration that the sun will return!"

The cheer that went up made his ears ring.

.

Bao did not particularly enjoy the Winter Solstice.

The endless stress of trying to get people to do what he asked, the strain of remembering all the words and phrases he had to use, as well as what he had to do at every moment in the ceremony… it wasn't exactly fun for him, no matter how much everyone else liked it.

But he would be the first to say that, once all the lists were ticked off and the work done and the pageantry finished, there was something beautiful about watching his tribe celebrating the return of the sun all together.

Knowing that he didn't have to do _anything_ the next day helped too.


	13. Angel & Lights

_Sorry you didn't get a chapter yesterday! I was having Christmas dinner with my housemates and it went on way longer than I expected. So there's two chapters today to make up for it._

 _The first is dedicated to SushiTheCookie, whose reviews and PMs never fail to cheer me up whenever they turn up in my inbox! Sushi suggested Reiji and/or Tetsuya to fill out the last place I had in my list of characters, and as I said I wanted a challenge, we're going with Reiji! It's not particularly Christmassy, it's just set at Christmas._

* * *

 **Reiji**

It is Christmas Eve when Reiji meets him.

He's not sure why this is important, but it is. The date sears into his memory, and though he doesn't know it he will never live through another Christmas Eve without thinking of this day.

He is there by invitation – a note dropped through his door with an address and an offer to allow him free reign with his desires – but he does not like the building. It is too bright. The ordinary lights would be enough, but after walking there through the city that had decorated for the Christmas season, it makes his head hurt. He likes the dark better.

The woman at the reception desk is very professional, but Reiji can tell she isn't certain about him. There are very few humans who are comfortable when they actually have to interact with him – the way he moves isn't entirely human, and they are unsettled by him, their primal memories of snakes overriding the evidence of their eyes that it is just a person there.

"Mizuchi?" she confirms. "Yes, you have a meeting with the Director. Please follow me."

She leads him up a flight of stairs and into a meeting room. It doesn't seem to be one that is used very often – the chairs are stacked against the walls and the tables are folded up. In the corner of the room, Reiji spots a little blinking red light, and gives his best sneer-smile to the camera. Should give some foolish security grunt a shock anyway.

The woman stays with him, to his surprise, even when the clock on the wall suggests he's been stood there for nearly fifteen minutes. She is gradually becoming more used to him, it seems – she's no longer watching him out of the corner of her eye. Reiji gets bored once she's no longer imminently afraid of him, and wanders over to the window.

The city below is festooned with lights. White, coloured, twinkling, still, large, small, in straight lines, curving around shapes – every type of light imaginable. Typical Christmas time. Reiji hates it. He's happiest in the shadows. No-one is ever afraid in the light, and Reiji lives to create fear. It is the only reason he battles.

After a few more minutes, Reiji hears footsteps outside in the corridor. Two sets. Wait, one. No, two – one of them walks with such purpose it's difficult to hear the other. He tenses.

"Don't be afraid," the woman says, and Reiji laughs. He is never afraid. His only joy is in making others afraid – what would he be if he was frightened too?

"He won't hurt you," she says, and then something in her manner seems to darken. "Not yet."

Before Reiji has a chance to work out what she is talking about, the door opens and a man walks in. He has spiky black hair with a single streak of gold, and wears a purple suit and glasses. On the pocket of the jacket, the logo that Reiji saw on the outside of the building is stitched.

And then the second person steps into the room, younger than the first but almost as tall. His hair is white, and his eyes are dragon-gold, and the world lights to blinding flame in his presence.

Reiji freezes.

He is certain he is about to die.

He is also certain that he is face to face with a _literal angel_.

Not the cutesy cherubs on cards, or the winged humans in old artworks. This is a supernatural warrior of terrifying power.

" _Do not be afraid"_ he had been told. Oh, but Reiji is afraid. Reiji is staring at the angel of death, and there is no word strong enough for the fear that pins him to the wall. He cannot bear to look at him directly, and instead watches him from between the strands of his hair. He's not certain whether he wants to run away or fight or kneel to swear his allegiance.

"You are Reiji Mizuchi, correct?" the man asks, and Reiji nods once, never taking his attention from the angel. "Thank you for agreeing to come here. We have been watching you for a while. We think you'll be a useful addition to our Dark Nebula organization. You have a particular style that we are interested in."

Reiji would do anything to get the weight of those lion-gold eyes off him. He would do anything to stay in their gaze forever. He cannot move, frozen in a mixture of terror and delight that is almost exhilarating.

When it becomes clear that Reiji is not going to make any answer, the man continues, "We would like to test you to see if your power is truly as formidable as it appears."

Test?

For the first time Reiji manages to drag his attention away from the angel and look at the man. "What sort of test?" he asks suspiciously.

"Nothing too difficult," the man says, smiling with his lips but not his eyes. "Just a battle against Ryuga here. Show us what you're capable of."

Reiji feels his blood run cold. To fight the angel – _Ryuga –_ is a death sentence. He knows this without knowing how. Imagine if he could turn this kind of fear on his own opponents? Will Ryuga show him how to do it before he destroys Reiji in the light of the otherworldly fire he burns with?

No-one is ever afraid in the light. But Ryuga's eyes blaze with fire, and Reiji _shudders_ in terror with the power they hold over him.

"He'll do," Ryuga says, voice like a lance through the heart. "He's the one you want." After a moment the man nods.

"Very well, Master Ryuga. You know best. Reiji, follow me..."

Reiji follows the man almost blindly, too preoccupied with the sense of weight from the gaze boring into his back. He might be a serpent, but he is nothing compared to the Dragon. He is afraid of Ryuga in a way that goes beyond dread. He _revels_ in that fear, tasting how strong it makes him as he refuses to give Ryuga a reason to make that fear rational.

This is the best Christmas present anyone could ever have given him.


	14. Candles & Miracle

_The second chapter of the day! This is one of my favourites, and I've been looking forward to writing it ever since I sorted out the list of words and realised I'd given Yuu_ miracle _._

* * *

 **Yuu**

There they were, at the bottom of the decorations box. Seven long, thin, gold candles in a box once meant for twelve, three of them already half-burned.

Yuu took them out of the box carefully, feeling the heavy beeswax warm slightly in his hands. He'd always been so sparing with them, but he couldn't deny that one day they were going to be burned down completely.

The first time he had tried to explain to Gingka why he sat in a room on his own and lit two gold candles on the twenty-first night of December, Gingka had asked him why he didn't buy more candles if he was so worried about them burning out. But that was the point. They were from Dark Nebula. He would never be able to get _these_ candles again.

Yuu dug around in the box until he pulled out the two candlesticks and the matches. With a bit of effort he managed to get two of the half-burned candles into their holders once more, and placed them on the table.

For the next hour or so he ignored them, preoccupied with sorting out the rest of the decorations so that they were all in neat piles for putting up the next morning. Outside, the evening fell fast. On this, the shortest day of the year, clouds came in early and reduced the amount of sunlight even further; Yuu turned the lights on at just after half past three so that he could see. But eventually he found himself with no further jobs to do, and picked up the matches.

The candles lit quickly, their sweet scent filling the air almost immediately. Yuu leaned around the low sofa and turned the lights off before dropping down to sit almost eye-level with the flames. He had done this every year since the Nemesis Crisis. When the day became so short that the night seemed endless, he lit two candles at dusk and waited, lost in memories and praying for a miracle.

"Yuu?"

Yuu didn't turn around when the door opened and let a slit of light fall across him. He knew who it was anyway. "Hey, Kenta." His voice cracked a bit on the second word.

A hand brushed against his shoulder. "Are you okay? Can I join you?"

Yuu nodded, not trusting his voice any more, and shifted up so that Kenta could sit down on the sofa next to him.

"It still hurts." he said after a long silence. "I can still hear the way his breathing sounded right at the end. Sometimes it's like the years in between never happened and I just expect him to come striding back in to our fights like he used to and… and he never does."

Kenta looked at him sadly. "I miss him too. More than I ever thought I would."

"I just… I thought he would always be here." Yuu wasn't certain where the words were coming from, but they were raw in their trueness and he suddenly found himself trying not to cry. "I wouldn't have met any of you without him. I owe him so much and he taught me so much and I just… I wish I could have said thank you. For all the times he helped us even when he didn't really want to. For all the times he helped Tsubasa, or Gingka, or you… or me."

Kenta leaned into him slightly, shoulder pressing to shoulder in solidarity. "There'll never be anyone else like him. That's for sure."

"I'm glad you got to know him," Yuu said. "Even if I wish it could have been me." Kenta said nothing, but Yuu knew there was no animosity between them, just the weight of loss.

Again there was silence between them. Yuu let his mind wander back to the past, recalling memories of a fallen friend as he did every year on the anniversary. For one evening of the year, for one hour as the candle burned, he would sit on his own in the dark with nothing but the candle flames for light, and remember everything he could about the man once known as the Dragon Emperor.

It had started as his own private mourning, morphing to remembrance as the years dulled the grief, but some of the others knew about it. Kenta, of course, who had known Ryuga so well in the end. Tsubasa, who knew Yuu. And Gingka, who always understood. But most of the time they just came for a brief time, to stay with Yuu in the darkness and the stillness, and then they left him alone to pray for the impossible.

The Western traditions that Tsubasa and Masamune had told him about insisted that Christmas was a time for miracles. Yuu had only seen two things he might have considered miracles in his life, neither of them anywhere near Christmas time and both of them on some of the worst days of his life. So, really, he was overdue for a proper Christmas miracle. At least, that was his theory. It hadn't worked so far.

After about half an hour, as expected Kenta straightened and stood up. "I- I'm going to go and help with dinner," he said. "I'll come and get you when it's ready, okay?"

Yuu just nodded, deep in thought. He barely noticed when the door clicked shut behind Kenta.

Left alone, the light from the candles seemed to expand to fill the whole room. The golden wax was dripping down the side of the candlestick and heading dangerously close to the table, but it would be fine – Yuu was only going to be a few more minutes and then he'd blow them out. Best to save as much of the wax as possible.

He didn't know why he'd had the candles with him on the day that he left the Dark Nebula. All he knew was that he had found them undamaged in his pocket after the fall of Battle Tower, and had immediately shoved them as far under his bed as possible so he didn't have to think about everything that had happened to him in that place.

But when the first anniversary of the Nemesis Crisis rolled around, he had been trying to displace the memories of his lost friend by tidying, and had found them again – this last link he still had to Dark Nebula, but also to Ryuga, who had liked to have fire nearby at all times. The candles had been his, usually found on the Dark Nebula dinner table.

Perhaps Yuu had been taking another set of them to the dining room when he had been ordered to fight Reiji, and that was why he had them in his pocket when he escaped? So many memories had been lost. Some of them had been terrible, that was true, but Yuu was all too aware that as time went on he was losing the clarity of the memories he wanted to keep – watching Ryuga fight and grow stronger every day; witnessing L-Drago's true power for the first time, before it had turned possessive; seeing a young man with white hair step out of a helicopter onto yellow rock and proceed to answer Yuu's attack-greeting with one of his own, treating Yuu as an equal.

Even when he closed his eyes, he could still see the two flames flickering in the darkness like a pair of deep gold eyes.

.

 _Yuu opened his eyes into near-darkness. Beside him on the table, the candles were flickering low, barely an inch of wax left. He should blow them out before he used up more wax..._

" _Yuu."_

 _The voice froze him into stillness. Not because he wasn't expecting someone to be there (there were far too many people in his house for that), but because he recognised it. And that voice wasn't possible._

 _Yuu raised his eyes to look over the top of the candle flames and across to the other side of the table, where a young man with white hair and fierce, dragon-ish eyes sat with his elbows propped on the table and his chin in one hand._

" _Ryuga..." Yuu breathed, and the erstwhile Dragon Emperor smiled so that his eyes flashed in the candlelight._

" _You've been asleep for some time. I'm glad to see you awake at last." His voice was as soft as his smile, and Yuu felt his heart sink._

" _Is… is this a dream?" he asked._

" _Do I look like a dream to you?"  
_

 _Yuu shook his head. It was true. Ryuga was sharp and clear and solid, almost more so than Yuu himself. "But you sound like one. You'd never say you were happy to see me. It's me who wanted you to say that."_

" _So if you're not going to believe I'm here, why did you ask for a miracle?"_

 _._

"Yuu? Hey, Yuu. Wake up."

Yuu opened his eyes – _actually_ opened them this time – to see that the lights had been turned on in the room and another so-familiar face was smiling down at him. Tsubasa had one hand on his shoulder and was shaking him gently.

"Hey," he said softly as soon as he realised he had Yuu's attention. "I came in here and the candles were burned out and you were fast asleep. Dinner's ready."

The candles had burned out? Yuu sat up with a jolt and looked up at the table, only to find that Tsubasa was right. As he had slept, the candles had completely burned down, and there was nothing left of either of them. Now he only had five left.

"I'm sorry," Tsubasa said. "I should have come in earlier, I know how important those candles are to you, how they help you remember." Then he paused. "That's strange," he said suddenly. "Yuu, look at the wax."

Where the two candles had burned all the way down, a cascade of dripping wax had fallen over the edge of the stand and bled across the table. But that wasn't what had caught Tsubasa's attention.

The wax wasn't smooth. Instead, it was covered in tiny indentations like half-moons, or _scales_. And, at the end furthest from the candle, the wax stream had split to form a side-view of the open mouth of –

" _L-Drago,_ " Yuu whispered, reaching out to touch the impossible object. The wax cracked away from the candlesticks when he touched it, leaving him with what could only be described as a perfect wax model of a dragon curled up in his hands. Tsubasa was staring at it too, eyes wide. Finally, he cleared his throat.

"I think you can safely call that a Christmas miracle, Yuu," he said. He knew all too well what Yuu hoped for at this time of year. "I don't know how it happened, but that's not something normal."

Yuu made no reply, but ran one finger along the cool wax scales, only half-imagining the feel of real, warm scales brushing past his cheek. Yes, this was a miracle and no mistake.

Perhaps it wasn't the miracle he had asked for. But it was enough for him.


	15. Fruit Cake & Candy

_To my anon and guest reviewers who have been asking – yes, I am absolutely continuing Phosphorus/In Whom We Trust/Dragon Reborn etc!_

 _Brief callback to Nile's chapter here._

* * *

 **Benkei**

"I smell good things," was the very first thing that Kyouya said when Benkei opened the door of his house. "Hey, Benkei."

"Hi, Kyouya-buddy! Come in, I've just finished making everyone's Christmas presents so everything's a bit of a mess."

"You _make_ everyone's presents?" Kyouya asked, stepping past Benkei into the house. Benkei gave him a quizzical look.

"Kyouya, you've had presents from me for years. I always make cake."

"Even though Madoka does the same thing?"

Benkei grinned. "She's way better at making sponge cakes and chocolate cakes, but fruit cake is _my_ speciality."

Kyouya halted in the doorway to the kitchen and stared. "You weren't kidding," he said. "How much cake have you _made?_ "

Benkei shrugged as he took in the scene of chaos that he hadn't really even tried to clear up. "Enough for everyone."

"And by everyone you mean..."

"Nile, you, Demure, Kenta, Gingka, Madoka, Tsubasa, Yuu, Masamune, Yuki… Hikaru… oh, and Tithi, he's staying with Yuu this year so he'll be around."

Kyouya's eyes went very wide. "That's… Benkei, that's a dozen people. You've made _twelve_ fruit cakes?"

Benkei shook his head. "No, only for the people who like fruit cake. Some people are getting sweets or candies."

"Which one am I getting?"

If he hadn't been Kyouya, Benkei would have scowled at him. "Do you like fruit cake?"

Kyouya laughed. "Okay, I deserved that. But wait, you're making sweets too?"

"Only a few. Yuki's getting Turkish Delight. And Nile doesn't like sweet things but he loves mint so he's getting dark chocolate mint truffles."

Kyouya _stared._ "You know how to make those?"

Benkei gave him a flat look. "Who did all the cooking for Team Wild Fang whilst we were travelling?"

"I take your point, but… there's a difference between cooking and _hand_ - _making_ _Turkish Delight._ "

Benkei didn't have an answer to that. Instead, he cleared a space at the table and indicated to Kyouya to sit down. "I've just got to finish up the salted caramels for Yuu, I won't be long."

" _Salted ca-_ you know what, I'm just going to assume you can make everything in the known universe apart from sponge cake." Kyouya shook his head. "That's incredible."

"All I'm doing is following the recipe," Benkei mumbled, shocked by the sudden compliment. It was so rare for Kyouya to do that he didn't really know how to react.

Kyouya didn't reply. Instead, he turned his attention almost deliberately away from Benkei, and looked around the room at the various cakes scattered across every surface.

"That's not yours," Benkei said as he sprinkled salt on the top of the setting caramels, seeing Kyouya sneak a hand towards the cake cooling on the draining board out of the corner of his eye. "That's Demure's, he doesn't like dried peel so that one doesn't have any in it."

Kyouya looked surprised. "How do you know that?"

"He said it once when we were in India, when we had that curry with all the dried fruit in. He'll eat it if he has to, but he'd rather not. And that's not yours either," Benkei continued as Kyouya's attention turned to the second cake on top of the microwave. "That's Tsubasa's, it's got extra nutmeg in, that's his favourite."

Kyouya looked around. "Are _all_ of these cakes customised?"

"Of course. There's no fun in giving everyone the same present. Gingka's has almonds in it, Tsubasa's has extra nutmeg and apricots, and Hikaru's is made with dark brown sugar instead of demarara."

"You remember everyone's preferences in that amount of detail? Not just whether they like cake or not, but what they like in it?"

"You're my friends," Benkei said simply. "Food makes people happy. I like making people happy, and I like making food. And everyone is different, so when they talk about their favourite things I try to remember it so I can make the things that would make them happiest. Imagine if I gave you something that had cherries in it." Kyouya pulled a face. He hated cherries. "Exactly. Which is why yours doesn't have any cherries in it, but Kenta's does because he loves them." Benkei smiled. "Yours has got crystallized ginger in it instead."

Kyouya was silent for a long time, apparently lost in thought. With the caramels cooling, Benkei decided to start tidying up a little bit, only to find his friend joining him with a tea towel. Together they cleaned and cleared up until the kitchen was in a slightly more presentable state. Finally, just as Benkei was rooting around in the bottom cupboards for some boxes to put the cooled cakes into, Kyouya said, "You're not really giving people fruit cake or candy at Christmas, are you? You're giving them acknowledgement that you see them all as individuals with their own tastes, but it just happens to come in cake form. And you're not making one thing that everyone will eat, you're making something perfect for each person individually."

"That's what presents usually are," Benkei reminded him. "That's what they're meant to be, anyway. I've just used the same base for everyone and adapted it."

Kyouya was quiet again for a moment. Then he said "Could you show me how to make truffles?"

"You don't like chocolate, though," Benkei pointed out.

"No," Kyouya said, and his smile was sudden, like the sun through the clouds. "But _you_ do."


	16. Greetings & Bells

_Oops, meant to put a warning on Benkei's chapter that I was probably going to miss yesterday's door as I had two concerts and a rehearsal to do! Never mind, here's yesterday's chapter._

 _By this point you've probably noticed_ _my own biases coming out a bit – my favourite characters are sneaking into more stories than they really should. Ryuga is the worst at this (mostly because most of these stories are explicitly based after the Nemesis Crisis and as my headcanon puts the Nemesis Crisis on the Winter Solstice, they're all near the anniversary and so what happened to him is front and centre in people's minds), but Bao, Zeo, Toby, Tsubasa and Yuu are doing a good job of turning up unexpectedly and wanting starrin_ _g roles!_ _And I love them, so I rarely say no._

* * *

 **Da Shan**

It was one of the chores and the pleasures of being the Leader of the Beylin Temple that Da Shan was responsible for greeting everyone who came through the gate, no matter when or how they arrived.

Normally, this was fairly uncommon – a small group of elite youngsters would arrive once a year as the newest recruits, and every now and then a particularly determined challenger would drop by. Other than that… well, the Temple was on top of a remote mountain in the middle of China that only a certain select group even knew how to find. They didn't get many visitors.

And then Gingka Hagane had shown up on the scene and now there were visitors every other week, it seemed.

Not that this was a bad thing! Da Shan loved it, actually. Challengers from around the world gave the Temple new ideas and techniques to practice against, and of course it was good to see all of the bladers that had become their friends more often.

But none of that had really prepared Da Shan for welcoming _everyone_ to the Temple for what was supposedly a celebration of two years since the destruction of Nemesis, but that at least half of the visitors had taken as a Christmas party.

Of course, the old Gan Gan Galaxy team were the first to arrive, with Yuki, Kenta and Tithi in tow. Da Shan had greeted them happily, welcoming them to his home once more. Tithi had been awestruck by the height of the mountain peaks, and ignored Da Shan's greeting in favour of just staring at everything. Eventually, Tsubasa had rolled his eyes and actually tugged the younger blader through the gate.

A few hours later, Kyouya Tategami had prowled up to the entrance with Team Wild Fang, and just behind him was the young – old? It wasn't quite clear – Guardian of Mist Mountain, Dynamis. Da Shan had greeted them with honour, respecting Demure's traditions and Dynamis' wisdom as much as his own.

The third group were the Americans and their friends – Masamune, Zeo, Toby, Chris and King - who were the first to aim for Christmas rather than reunion. Most of them answered Da Shan's greeting politely, and he was particularly impressed with the quiet team-work that was obvious between Zeo and Toby. They would be a formidable tag-team, and he was more than tempted to see what they were capable of against China's best.

And talking of tag-teams…

No-one had quite known how to react when the guard at the front gate had interrupted the on-going welcomings and greetings to report that two members of the Beylin Fist were outside the door, requesting entry. Da Shan had immediately dropped what he was doing and followed the young man to the outer gate, Chao Xin and Chi-Yun trailing warily behind him.

Wearing battered, dirty travelling cloaks, Bao and Aguma had stood outside the Temple, looking very apprehensive.

"I invited them," Gingka had said, coming up behind Chi-Yun. "They were as much a part of the destruction of Nemesis as anyone."

Da Shan had inclined his head, hiding his true thoughts. He knew what Gingka had done, and respected him enormously, but… inviting the ancient foes of Beylin Temple right into the heart of their strength?

Then again, Gingka often knew what he was doing, far more than one might originally assume. So Da Shan had extended a greeting to the two bladers, though one that was far colder than any he had given to the others. Once he had allowed them through the gates, the Beylin Fist bladers had melted into the crowds, and Da Shan only caught glimpses of them for the rest of the afternoon, mostly in the company of Dynamis and Chris.

.

As the sun went down and the Temple courtyard lit up with bonfires and lanterns in preparation for the feast at dinner time, Da Shan took the chance to go and stand on the outer walls and watch over his home. It was busy and happy and full of visitors, but that was all for the good. One of the main tenets of Beylin Temple was hospitality, after all.

He was slightly surprised to spot Chao Xin coming up the steps to the walls – normally the other blader was happiest in the centre of the party.

"What's wrong, Chao Xin?"

"There's someone who wants to talk to you." Chao Xin's voice was a little bit strange, almost as if he was uncertain about something. Da Shan just nodded and stood up, only to understand Chao Xin's reticence a moment later when Bao of the Beylin Fist stepped on to the walls.

"You can go," Da Shan said aloud to Chao Xin, knowing that the other blader wouldn't go too far. "Bao. What is it that you wanted with me?"

The Beylin Fist warrior seemed to be pretending that he wasn't uncomfortable where he was. "I came to formally accept your greeting. I am aware that I didn't do it in the proper manner at the gate."

What an odd thing to say. "I thought that you'd accepted it when you stepped through the gate. Actually, I must admit, I was surprised that you came at all."

Bao leaned on the parapet, not meeting Da Shan's eyes. "We were surprised to get the invitation."

"That was Gingka's idea, apparently. He seemed to think that everyone needed to be here. But there are those within the Temple who are very unhappy that you were invited at all."

Bao finally looked at him, a little sideways. "There weren't exactly very many people in my tribe who wanted us to accept it."

"Does that surprise you? Your tribe has been training to defeat and humiliate mine for two thousand years, whilst we kept watch to make sure you could never cause that damage again. To suddenly get an invitation to the seat of our power…"

Bao looked away again. "Things are different now. Beylin Fist is known almost as well as Beylin Temple around the world. Our style is respected and our history acknowledged. It's all I ever wanted for us."

"You're still the schism group," Da Shan said darkly. "History or not, the Temple is the true source of blading in China."

For a moment, it looked like Bao was about to argue, but then he just shook his head. "We come from the same source, streams from the same spring. My group, we know we don't need to fight you to prove that we're just as good. We're different, yes, but everyone is. We don't fight the same way Gingka does, or Kyouya, or the American bladers, or the Europeans. But the Elders of the tribe aren't convinced. I'm doing my best to keep it under control, but… some of them want war."

Da Shan frowned. This was not the conversation he had been expecting to have with one of the leaders of Beylin Fist, on the two-year-anniversary of the destruction of Nemesis, standing on top of a wall in the middle of the Beylin Temple. "Why are you telling me this?"

"It's Christmas. Isn't it supposed to be about peace on earth?" Bao looked out across the valley. "I want my family safe. Running into a war we don't have to fight isn't the way to keep them that way."

It was almost like looking into some kind of warped mirror. "All I want to do is keep my family safe too," Da Shan said quietly. "We just do it differently to you. We fight to protect. We hold on to the past, and stand as shields against the Darkness."

"And we fight to move forwards, pushing into the Dark so that we find the other side."

Da Shan nodded. It was making sense to him now. "That's why the Star Fragment came to you, not to us. The Star didn't need people who would use its power to keep things as they were. It needed people who were willing to see change."

Bao didn't answer. Just then, a clear ringing sound filled the air all around them, and both bladers looked up.

"That's the –" Da Shan began.

"The dinner bell?" Bao asked, and for the first time he seemed to be smiling. "It sounds just like our bell at the Fortress."

Streams from the same spring indeed. Da Shan looked at Bao, _really_ looked, and this time he finally felt as if he saw past the Beylin Fist exterior to the blader within. Like Da Shan, he led a group of fierce warriors who were trained from birth to be the best at what they did. Like Da Shan, he was not the oldest, nor the tallest, but he had authority that was undeniable.

Like Da Shan, he was a leader.

"Bao," Da Shan said, despite the instinct to shelter his tribe behind the Temple shields forever, "Would you do us the honour of battling us in the New Year? Not to prove who is the strongest, but simply to battle, as equals."

"Equals, huh?" Bao mused, but he was holding Da Shan's gaze steadily. "I can't promise anything, not whilst the Elders are being the way they are, but… just for me, I'd like the chance to fight you."

Da Shan smiled. With the bells ringing out over the courtyard, calling all together to celebrate, perhaps it was time to take another step into a shared future.


	17. Holly & Snowflake

**Ryuga**

 _._

 _Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown_

 _._

When he opened his eyes, the world was grey and cold.

He had no idea where he was, how he had got there, or what had happened after the –

 _dazzling flash of black midnight bright screaming emptiness_

\- after _that._

It wouldn't quite be accurate to say that everything hurt. He was too numb for that. Too cold. Too empty.

What was he missing?

Very slowly, he became aware that he wasn't just cold. He was soaked through, trousers and shirt and boots and the tattered remains of his coat all drenched in -

It was snowing.

He sat up, disturbing what had become a considerable blanket of snow coating almost all of him. How long had he been here for that to form? And the snow wasn't quite white. He held out a hand, letting a snowflake land on it, and in the dim light he just about managed to make out the strange colour it had. The snow was mixed with ash, turning it grey and slushy in his hand.

So the fall out from – _it_ – was still going on. Not as much as he might have expected, all things considered, but enough that it couldn't have been more than a few days before.

It was useless looking for the stars to give him the time or the place or even a hint a the date; they were covered by snowclouds. In this flat, featureless plain of grey snow and bitter wind, he was alone.

 _L-Drago?_ he asked, only to meet aching silence in his heart. He flinched back mentally as much as physically, the shock clearing the last of the fog from his brain. Yes. L-Drago was gone now. His dragon-fire core was shattered, and there was no internal flame to shelter him from winter's bitter cold. No wonder he was freezing.

For a brief moment, he entertained the idea of forgetting everything and collapsing in on himself like melting snow. Without L-Drago, without heat and shelter, he was defenceless out in the cold. Hypothermia would get him if exhaustion didn't – even _he_ couldn't overpower the force of nature.

If he stayed still long enough, maybe the blanket of snow would get thick enough to be warm.

He was almost on the brink of lying down again and just letting go when something snagged in the corner of his eye. In the world of grey, there was something different. Through the whirling snow, he could make out something low to the ground, a deep green shot through with dots of red. It wasn't far from him.

He didn't really want to sleep in the grey. But the green was nice, a peaceful sort of colour. He could sleep there, forever if he had to.

With not inconsiderable effort, he pushed himself to his feet. The wind was bitter, howling across the wasteland, and what was left of his clothes offered no protection from it. It was all he could do to summon enough strength to make it to the strange lump.

It was a holly bush, covered in spiky green leaves and with red berries poking between their thorny protectors. He collapsed at its roots, willing the thick, prickly leaves to shield him from the wind, even if it was just for a few minutes.

He was terrifyingly weak. There was no power left in his body or his will or his spirit. He'd never felt anything like this, not even after the horrendous transformation on the top of -

He blinked, partly in surprise at himself and partly to get a stray snowflake out of his eyes. He couldn't remember. Oh, he knew what had happened, but the images weren't there. How very odd.

At least he seemed to be sheltered a little from the wind, hidden underneath the holly. But it wasn't enough. Warmth was rising up his body, from his toes to his knees to his chest. As much as he wanted to relax into the feeling, something was warning him. Vaguely, he recognised that the warmth wasn't really there, that he was drifting on the perilous cliff-edge of unconsciousness, dreamlike, snowflake-light. Normally by this point, L-Drago would have noticed something wrong and would have sorted it out, but the silence from his dragon was more than just the aching hole in his heart.

Could he even remember the dragon? He tried to recall the last time he had seen L-Drago, but all the memories he could conjure were grey and flat and dull, or horrifying. Where was his dragon?

He put one freezing hand on his left forearm, only to discover that the gauntlet was gone. How long ago had that happened? Had someone stolen it while he lay unconscious, or had it vanished when the white darkness had raged over him?

What could he do now, without his dragon and without his blade? He was helpless in a way he had never been before, alone and terribly injured in an unknown, freezing space that was already seeking to cover him in snow again.

He tried to think back, to see if he had ever been in a similar situation, but every memory he had was dimming, clouded with some kind of dark film, as if the Darkness itself had got inside his head and bled the colour from every thought.

No.

Not every thought. Here and there, there were flashes of colour – green and red, mostly, like the holly that sheltered him.

Green hair, a fierce flag against the dark, as – _Kenta, that was his name –_ Kenta stood in front of him with his arms outstretched, eyes alight with determination on that last night.

Red hair, more familiar and more easily connected to a name – _Gingka,_ the master of Pegasus, the Great Rival and the only real challenge left in the world.

A flicker of green light, giving a glow to an older memory that had almost faded except for the brilliant-blazing smile on a young boy's face when three dragons bit into a pillar of green light-sound, on the day he had fought – _Yuu_ – as an equal.

A green bey, calling a whirlwind from nothing as its owner demanded he fight with only his own spirit, and he had answered to fight one of the best battles he had ever fought, no matter what the end had been.

He knew these places. He knew these people. He had fought them and honoured them all in their own way. But why was it that these memories alone had not lost their colour to the all-encroaching grey? He sank deeper into his thoughts, ignoring the fading numbness of his body as he tried to recall even one more memory of colour in the grey.

Slowly, it rose out of the depths, as red as holly berries. A fire, deep inside a mountain. Not a man-made fire this, but something deeper, more primordial. He remembered heat, real heat against his face, and the cherry-red glow of his blade when he summoned it back to him.

 _L-Drago,_ his soul sighed.

\- the snow had stopped.

Or, rather, the snow had stopped landing on him.

The memory of fire flared brighter in his heart, fuelled by the memory of colours that split even the grey of the Darkness apart, and the memory of battles that had called to the blader's spirit within him.

And as his spirit flickered back to life, in the grey-dark night, a pale shadow of a dragon wrapped around him.

Warmth – true warmth – exploded through his veins, and Ryuga suddenly remembered _his own name._ One full breath later and the snow began melting from his skin as the dragon, weary, injured, but _here_ and _with him,_ bled heat into every cell.

 _I am here now. I will not leave you, my Emperor._

 _L-Drago._

The relief wasn't quite enough to counter the sudden and unwelcome realisation that he _hurt._ Not in the skin-deep way that had marked every step he had taken away from the Battle Bladers Tower, but far more serious. Ryuga let his head fall back against the branches of the holly, not caring when the prickly leaves dug into his skin.

"How are you here?" he asked, only aware that he'd said it aloud when the words became puffs of white on the freezing air. "What happened?"

 _Nemesis is gone. The Legendary Bladers defeated him. And I carried you away from there with the last of my strength, to save you from what I knew would come. But I have nothing left to give now._

 _Where are we?_ It was easier to ask questions in his mind.

 _I do not know. I took you as far as I could. But it was not far. And then your spirit went out, and I could not find you. I thought I had lost you._

 _Never,_ Ryuga promised, with all the ferocity he could summon. _But…_

 _But you awoke your spirit again. And now I am with you, and I will never leave you, never, ever, though the world crumble and all the years of our lives lie in ash and dust._

The warmer he got, the more he hurt, body and spirit wrenched apart by the Armageddon attack. There was no question of him moving much more than one limb at a time now. All he wanted to do was sleep.

 _It is time to rest now, my Ryuga,_ L-Drago whispered, and Ryuga exhaled, the breath forming clouds of dragonsmoke on the air. _I will take us where none will find us until we are needed again. The world will spin without us for a while. Sleep. Heal. Regain your strength. I will watch over you._

There was the faintest sensation of L-Drago's mane against his cheek. Ryuga raised a hand to his dragon, not really certain and not really caring whether L-Drago had really taken physical form or whether it was a trick of his exhausted mind. _Not here,_ he said. _It's far too cold._

 _I will take you to where the fires never die,_ L-Drago promised, his voice humming with love. _They do not need us now. As the snowflakes melt into the earth, so too will our time fade. But as the holly is evergreen, so are we eternal. Now sleep. I am with you. I will not leave you._

.

A patch of colour in the grey was all he got for Christmas, but when the colour was L-Drago's burning scales, that was the only colour he needed to see.


	18. Party & Yule

**Julian**

It was getting to the point where Julian was thinking it was deliberate.

In a burst of unusual forethought, the European branch of the WBBA had started arranging their annual Christmas Party in the middle of October, leaving plenty of time for bladers who wanted to come to book tickets and hotels. Julian had, of course, replied immediately to the invitation to accept his place. He was, after all, the foremost blader in Europe. It simply would not do for him to miss the WBBA party.

Three days later, he discovered that he had another function that night n family business, and would not be able to go.

The European branch were sympathetic, and as they had only sent out a few invitations and Julian really was very important to them, they agreed to shift the date of the party by a couple of days.

And _then_ , about two weeks after that, Julian's father had mentioned in an off-hand sort of way that the family were going to the Harrison Christmas function. And, of course, it was on the new date of the WBBA party.

Julian briefly thought about pushing for another new date, but really it was too late now. All the invitations had been sent out and most of the catering and live music had been booked already. There was no moving it now. Besides, they'd already been nice enough to move it once – moving it again would have been pushing his influence a bit too far.

"It'll be fine," Klaus rumbled down the phone during the bi-weekly team call, when Julian complained about the situation. "Just go to both of them. The function is an early dinner followed by a show, right? Just leave before the show and you can come to ours, no problem."

He made a good point. It wasn't as if anyone would really notice that he was gone once the show started. "Fine," Julian sighed. "It's pretty much all I can do, anyway."

.

Normally, Julian actually quite enjoyed the Harrison family functions. They always had the best food, and interesting people to talk to, and there was often a fancy dress theme as well. No different this year – the somewhat nebulous theme of "Yule" had been chosen – but still, Julian wasn't perfectly happy to be there.

"Yes, our plans for expansion into Eastern Europe are continuing," he explained for the third time that evening. "We are keeping an eye on the local developments, but we see no reason why we shouldn't push in whilst we can."

The man he was talking to nodded. "Interesting," he said. "You know, I didn't believe them when they said a young lad like you was in charge of so many of the business decisions. But you obviously do know what you're talking about. Hmm. I'll have to find out some more. Excellent costume, by the way, much better than that Guildford's lad. He's come as a Yule log."

"I give him the credit for the thinking," Julian said, repeating what he'd already said several times as small-talk forced most of those gathered to talk about the costumes. Julian himself had come as the Green Knight of Arthurian legend, dressed all in green with a sprig of holly in one hand and an axe on his belt. So far, only one person had realised who he was.

The evening seemed to drag interminably. Julian had plenty of people to impress and to talk to about business and the future of Europe in the world, had excellent food (though not as much as he expected) and a tasteful string quartet giving the background music.

But it wasn't where he wanted to be.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, it was time to get away. As the main group regathered for the start of the live theatre show, Julian drifted out of the party and over to the waiting car.

He felt his shoulders relax the second he got outside, posture momentarily slumping in relief. That was a lot of work. But now for something completely different – though perhaps taking the helmet and holly springs off first might improve his image somewhat.

.

He could hear the party long before he could see it. He wasn't quite sure whether they were playing Christmas music or just pop, but either way most of the street seemed to be subjected to it. Then again, most of the street seemed to be invited, and there was at least one additional party going on simultaneously.

The car dropped him outside the hall that the WBBA had hired, and after making sure he looked presentable (not as sharp as for the Harrison family function, but still better than most), he knocked.

Then: "Huh?"

It took him a second or two to place the strangely familiar young man who had opened the door. He was almost as tall as Wales, but had bright yellow hair and brilliant green eyes. It was that more than anything that tipped Julian off.

"Oh, hey, Julian. You look really fancy," Yuu Tendo said. "And green. Wales said you were at another party. I'm glad you came to this one!"

He flung the door wide open, revealing the rest of the group. Some of them looked up and waved at Julian as he peered in, but only Wales, Sophie and Klaus stood up and came over.

"Hello," Sophie said, smiling happily. "You made it, I see."

"Just," Julian agreed, stepping inside. "And not to be rude, but is there any food? It turned out that "dinner and a show" was actually "nibbles and talking for ages until the show was ready to begin half an hour late", I'm starving."

Klaus grinned at him. "Loads," he assured him. "If you hadn't noticed yet, the Japanese bladers showed up out of nowhere, so we just ordered pizza. It should be here any minute."

"Hey, Julian!" King called from the other side of the room. "Come outside and fight me!"

"He really thinks he can challenge the Emperor of Europe?" Wales asked almost scathingly, but Julian knew him better than that, and could hear the laugh in his voice. "We'll see about that. Sophie and I will take care of this."

"No need," Julian said, waving a hand at them to get them to calm down. "I'll fight him. But _after_ food."

Yes, this really was the only Christmas party worth going to. Not because he got to eat good food, or talk with people, or even demonstrate his talents – he got to do all that at every other party he went to.

But at _this_ party, he wasn't doing it as Julian Konzern, pride of the family and heir to the Konzern family fortunes. Instead, here he was just Julian, a blader like the rest of them, welcomed by friend and rival alike.

Here, he got to have Christmas just as himself.


	19. Presents & Colours

**Chris**

Most people who knew Chris were surprised by one specific thing about him.

He was very good at getting lost.

Well, not lost. But he was very good at losing _people._

As someone who was very self-reliant and independent, he wasn't used to forming groups and keeping up with them (or allowing them to keep up with him). It was a regular occurrence that he would go along "with" Masamune and the other bladers from Dungeon Gym to the nearby bey park for training or an in-gym tournament, only to change his mind halfway along the route and go somewhere else without them noticing. He would then reappear at the gym several hours later, normally just before the people he was supposed to be with sent out a search party. Zeo found this particularly frustrating, though Masamune seemed to understand.

So when Coach Steel sent all of them out so that he could decorate the gym for Christmas in peace, Chris was prepared to just wander off somewhere on his own as usual. But then Masamuen grabbed him.

"Hey," he said. "Where are you off to?"

Chris shrugged. "Around. I'll find someone to battle, what's it to you?"

Masamune's eyes were dancing. "Have you got your person a present yet? The Secret Santa thing, I mean."

Chris frowned. "Wait, that's today? But Christmas isn't for another week."

"Coach told you," Zeo said, joining the group. "We all have to have our presents ready by today, that's our tradition. Once Coach puts up the tree, we put all the presents underneath it and then have to wait for Christmas Day before opening them. It's about exercising restraint in everything, not just in blading. Think of it as training."

Chris pulled a face. "I thought I had another week. Guess I'd better get a move on."

"Come with us," Toby offered. "We can show you where the best places to go are."

.

Chris halted in the doorway of Dungeon Gym and _stared._

"That is a big tree," he said, in a slightly strangled voice.

The tree stretched from floor to ceiling, just about. It was covered in lights – not the normal warm white lights that Chris was used to seeing on hotel Christmas trees, but bright, flashing, multicoloured ones that reflected off the equally multicoloured tinsel and baubles that hung all over it. But Chris' real attention had been caught by the base of the tree.

"It's real? _"_ he asked, pointing at the pot the tree was standing in. "Whoa, I just thought it was a really good fake. I've never seen a real one."

"Really?" Zeo asked.

Chris shrugged. "I'm used to being in hotels around about Christmas time. I don't normally notice when it's actually Christmas, except that the food's a bit different. But hotels don't usually have live trees, it's too much extra work I guess. And… are those all the presents?"

"Yep," Masamune said proudly. "Most of 'em are from Coach – he gets something for everyone because some of the guys come from really rough estates and don't get anything otherwise, so once all the Secret Santas are in there, it's going to be pretty crowded!"

"It's _beautiful,_ " Chris said.

It was the colours that got him. Every present was wrapped differently – whether it was with a different ribbon or a different paper, or with the paper diagonally instead of straight – and it made for a wonderfully chaotic display. Clearly Coach Steel was as talented at wrapping things as he was at teaching children to beyblade.

"Come on," Toby said. "Coach'll have some spare paper you can wrap yours in. Then we can get on and have that battle you promised."

"Er, I can't," Masamune said suddenly. "I've… got somewhere I need to be. Um. I'll catch you guys tomorrow?"

And he dashed out of the door.

"Weird," Chris muttered.

.

After that, it became much easier to find Chris. He spent most of his free time looking at the tree and the growing collection of presents under it, and rarely wandered away from the gym any more. .

When Christmas Day finally came around, and Chris received his handsomely wrapped parcel, he almost couldn't bear to unwrap it and rip the bright paper. Even surrounded by a sea of paper from the presents the other bladers had already torn open, the colours were so festive and beautiful that he just stared at it for a while.

"You do know your present is _in_ the box, not the box itself, right?" Zeo said. Chris shook himself out of his reverie.

"Hey, be nice," Toby chided. "Chris hasn't done Christmas much before, let him do it at his pace."

"It beats sitting in a hotel and watching reruns of _Harry Potter,_ " Chris admitted, carefully sliding a finger under the tape in the hopes of keeping the pretty paper pristine for as long as possible. " _Harry Potter_ 's great, but when it's the only non-Christmas thing on TV and you've already watched it three times that week, it gets kind of dull. There was one year where I could recite the first ten minutes off by heart because I watched it so much – _oh!"_

He had finally managed to get into the box, only to find himself looking at _more boxes._ These were much smaller, with at least a dozen of them crammed into the larger box. Each one of them was wrapped in a different coloured or patterned paper, from shiny to glittery to pictured. The effect, just as it had been beneath the gym tree, was one of chaos and beauty all at once, and Chris stared. It was amazing. It was like having his own private Christmas tree, only without the tree. Wait, no – right at the bottom, there was a pipe-cleaner tree, glittering with tiny pieces of glitter like baubles.

"It's from me," Masamune said. "You kept on staring at the presents, so I thought you might like some permanent ones. With the price limit I couldn't get much, so… the boxes are empty, but you can put them up as decorations."

"That… really wasn't what I expected," Toby commented. "I didn't know you were this good at wrapping things up, Masamune."

Masamune shrugged. "I couldn't think of anything until I realised how much Chris liked the display under the tree. I had to make them overnight to get them done in time, but who cares! Now, even if you're in a hotel on your own, you can put the presents around a potplant or something and hey, there's Christmas!"

"Thank you," Chris said sincerely. "It's _perfect."_

Chris was very good at losing people. He had lost countless people who he had thought were his friends. He had wandered away from group after group, not seeing any reason why he should stay with them.

But he was determined he wasn't going to lose these ones.

No, this time, Chris was going to stay for Christmas. And even afterwards, Christmas was going to come with him, along with the memory of this little group who had pulled him inexorably into their midst and refused to let him drift away alone.


	20. Carols & Christmas Tree

_Weirdly, this was the first one I started writing, way back on November 30th. It's also the one I've been looking forward to writing the most ever since then!_

* * *

 **Tithi**

Yuu had told Tithi _everything_ about Christmas.

Well, that's what Tithi assumed anyway. He'd never had a Christmas before, and he was _so excited_ that he was going to get to be part of it this year. Presents and food sounded like a brilliant idea. Yuu had invited him to stay with him and Tsubasa that year, and Tithi had been so enthusiastic that he'd actually turned up a week early, and had proceeded to do his best to find out everything he could about this strange holiday.

"Why have we got a tree?" he asked one day, as he and Yuu were working to decorate said tree whilst Tsubasa made lunch.

"We hang decorations on it so that it looks good in the window," Yuu explained from his precarious perch on a chair. "You saw all the lights on the trees when we went shopping for presents, right? It's like that, but just in our house."

"But no-one else on the street has one?" Tithi pointed out, untangling a knot of tinsel. "Do they not celebrate Christmas?"

"Not quite," Tsubasa called from the kitchen. "It's one of the traditions I brought over here, it's more of a Western thing. I'm from Canada originally, so I've got a lot of the Western traditions that I like to keep here too. There's some debate about who did it first, but it's generally thought that it was a pagan custom that got taken over for Christmas. Of course, now you don't need to be religious to have one. I just like having it. It reminds me of my childhood in my old home."

"Do you want to go back there?" Tithi asked. Tsubasa was silent for a moment, the only sound the soft _tunk_ as a knife cut through something.

"No," he said at last. "My home's here now. Everyone I really care about is here. Besides, it's not like I can just abandon the WBBA like that."

Tithi nodded seriously, and handed the string of tinsel up to Yuu. "My home's here now too. But I don't have any traditions to bring here."

"That's fine, Tithi," Yuu said. "We can just make new ones! All we have to do is do the same thing again next year and there you go. We're making one now – decorating the tree together!"

That immediately cheered Tithi up. "That's awesome, Yuu! Let's make this the best tree ever!"

Tsubasa poked his head round the door a few minutes later to find his front room liberally covered with what looked like every single decoration from the box he had pulled from his attic that morning. His eagle, on the perch in the corner and happily munching on some chicken, was the only thing not buried under lights or tinsel or baubles. "Whoa," he said. "You do know you don't have to put everything on there, right? The wreath goes on the door, not on top of the tree. And that garland goes in the window." As two pairs of wide eyes turned to look at him, he laughed. "But you can do whatever with them, it's your tree as much as mine now."

"I'm going to put this on the door," Yuu announced, grabbing the wreath they had hung around the top branch. "How does it hang up, Tsubasa?"

"I'll show you," Tsubasa offered, and followed the younger blader out of the room.

They were gone for about five minutes, during which time Tithi managed to get almost all of the baubles onto the tree. The last one didn't seem to want to stay on its branch. There were two holes on one side of it, but they didn't go all the way through, and it didn't have a string or anything. It also didn't look like the other baubles – they were glittery and shiny and mostly rounded, whereas this one was rectangular and dull black, except for one white side edge.

"Hey, Tsubasa?" he asked as the other two came back in to the room. "How does this one go on the tree?"

"Oh!" Tsubasa exclaimed, eyes lighting up. "Where on earth did you find that, Tithi?"

"It was in the box..." Tithi began, but Tsubasa had already taken it from him and was holding it up to look at the white edge.

"I don't believe it," he said wonderingly. "I thought I'd lost this years ago, or at the very least that it was still in Canada."

"What is it?" Yuu asked, coming around to have a look. "I've never seen a bauble like that before."

"It's not a bauble," Tsubasa said. "It's a video cassette."

Tithi and Yuu looked at each other. "It's a what?"

Tsubasa smiled. "It's old technology. It's what we used to use before DVDs were invented. And this one is special. This one is a home-recorded one – look at the label. We recorded a program from the television onto it so that I could watch it again later. I even remember which year it was – it was the year I found my Eagle." The bird looked up at his name, but when more food obviously wasn't forthcoming, he went back to his preening. "It's a recording of _The Snowman."_

"So if it's like a DVD, can we watch it?" Yuu asked curiously. Tsubasa shrugged.

"I hope so," he said. "But it needs a proper player, and I don't know if I have one here, or if it will even work if I do. Tell you what, you two go and get lunch – you've earned it for all your hard work on the tree! - and I'll go back into the attic and see if I can find something to play this with."

And with that, he disappeared out into the hallway.

"Guess we should get food, then?" Yuu suggested. "You've done an awesome job on the tree, Tithi, it looks great!"

"Thanks! I like doing this, we should definitely do it again next year."

"Ugh, _next year,_ " Yuu said, wrinkling his nose. "It's so far away, I want it to be next year already! I want the next World Championship to hurry up and get here!"

"Me too! And I'm definitely going to be on your team. You and me and Tsubasa and… who else should we have?"

Yuu led the way into the kitchen. "So you're an all-rounder, I'm a Stamina type and Tsubasa's a Defence type, so we should have an Attack type to make sure that we can take on anything!"

The two boys happily chatted their way through lunch, debating the pros and cons of different bladers in their fantasy World Championship team. Most of the bread was gone, and all of the cheese and pickle, when Tsubasa reappeared with a massive grin on his face and a big silver box in his arms.

"You're in luck," he said. "This was right at the back, and there was a bunch of wires with it too. With some work, I reckon I can get this working again in about half an hour."

"Awesome!" Yuu crowed. "We saved you a sandwich, by the way."

"Thanks, I'll grab it later. If you're finished, why don't you come and give me a hand setting this up? You're smaller than me, you'll be able to get into the gap behind the TV much easier."

It turned out to be a generally bad idea to get Tithi involved in anything involving wires, and after the third time of untangling him from a nest of them Tsubasa kindly suggested that he move to the sofa and pet Eagle for a while – an unusual offer that Tithi took gladly.

It was about ten minutes later that Tsubasa gave a cry of victory and the TV flickered into life, showing a brief clip of a hand-drawn snowman on a motorbike before Tsubasa hit stop and it went black.

"Done it! Come on, Yuu, get out from behind there."

"Wait a minute," Tithi said, sounding worried. "It's something you had in Canada, right? So it's in Canadian? I… I can't speak Canadian, I won't know what's going on."

That made Tsubasa laugh, his eyes shining in the lights from the Christmas tree. "No, it's fine, Tithi. There's no words in it, except one song, and that's more about the music than the words. I can translate for you anyway, if you want."

"Oh." Tithi seemed to perk up somewhat, and he tucked his legs up underneath himself to get comfortable. "That's so nice of you, thank you!"

"No problem. Anyway, let's see if this is still working all the way through..."

.

Twenty-five minutes later, Tithi and Yuu were still gazing open-mouthed, taken by surprise at the ending of the story.

"That was..." Yuu began, trying to find the right words. "Wow."

Tithi put his head on Yuu's shoulder and sniffed. "I didn't want him to go."

Tsubasa reached over and gently ruffled his pink hair. "It's okay, Tithi. Even my grandma used to tear up at this film."

"Can we watch it again?" Tithi asked suddenly, sitting up. "I want to see the dance again."

"Of course," Tsubasa said. "I've just got to rewind it first."

"What's rewind?"

"It's not like a DVD, where you just go back to the beginning automatically. You have to rewind the tape in the machine if you want to watch it again. Watch!"

And to Tithi and Yuu's delight, the film they had just watched suddenly started whizzing backwards, soundlessly and much faster than it had gone forwards.

"There you go," Tsubasa said when they were back at the beginning. "You two watch that, I'm going to check on the fruit cake."

"Don't you want to watch it again?" Tithi asked.

Tsubasa smiled at them. "No, it's fine, Tithi. I watched this so many times as a child I'm amazed the tape still works. I've had my share of nostalgia for the day."

Yuu and Tithi settled back down to watch the film over again, this time pointing out to each other the details they'd missed the first time around. When it got to the end of the credits once again, Yuu sighed.

"I guess we should go and put the rest of the decorations up around the windows now," he said.

Tithi nodded. "Um, how do you stop this?" he asked, pointing at the video player. "Or the rewind thing Tsubasa talked about?"

Yuu grimaced. "Not sure," he said. "I'll go ask Tsubasa, hang on."

Tithi sat there, watching as the video continued playing, running into what looked like an advert for something. Then suddenly, without warning, the picture and the sound changed abruptly.

On the screen was a huge, ornate hall lined with pretty windows. Young boys dressed in white and red stood in lines along the walls at one end, faces lit by candles, singing something in a language Tithi didn't know.

And what a song it was. Tithi stared in awe as the sound rolled over him, harmonies shifting and echoing in the stone hall, high and clear as they were joined by a piano with long pipes on it, and then the deeper voices of some older men at the back of the lines. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard.

"What's going on?" Tsubasa asked from the doorway, leaning in to see what the music was. "Oh wow! I forgot that was on that tape."

"What is it?" Tithi asked breathlessly. "It's _beautiful._ "

"Remember I said this was a home-made tape? We taped it over a tape my uncle brought over from Britain one year. That's the Carols From Kings from the year before we taped _The Snowman_ over it."

"What's a carol?"

"It's a special Christmas song. Yuu told you about the way there are religious parts and non-religious parts to Christmas, right? Well, these songs are for the religious side. I like them anyway, they're some of the most beautiful pieces I know. This is from a performance they give every year in the King's College chapel in Cambridge in Britain. It's world-famous."

"I love them," Tithi said softly. "What are they singing?"

Tsubasa closed his eyes to listen. "Ah," he smiled. "That's _Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem._ It's one of my favourites. Do you want me to translate the words for you?"

Tithi shook his head. "No, that's fine, I just want to listen to the music… oh! It's stopped."

"Reached the end of the tape," Tsubasa said. "I remember, there used to be a second tape because the program was longer than you could fit on just one tape. No idea where it is now, of course."

"What about on the internet?" Yuu suggested. "I bet you could find it there."

"Good idea, Yuu. Stay here, Tithi, I'll find my laptop..."

.

Yuu had not told Tithi everything about Christmas. He hadn't mentioned watching films together, or carols, or snowmen, or videos, or trying to untangle tinsel.

But that didn't matter, Tithi decided, because now he had some traditions of his own to keep and treasure. Putting up the tree with Yuu. Going to the shops with Tsubasa to pick that year's new decoration to be added to the tree. Sitting on the sofa in the warm with a mug of sweet, milky tea and a slice of strawberry shortcake, listening to carols on Tsubasa's laptop as the lights on the tree twinkled through the branches, with Tsubasa softly translating the titles on one side of him and Yuu humming harmonies on the other.

Yuu hadn't mentioned how nice it felt to have people to share all of that with either.

.

* * *

 _Some author's notes!_

 _\- Canadian Tsubasa is canon with a touch of headcanon. It's canon that he finds a bald eagle chick and nest near his childhood home. Bald eagles are only found in North America so he's definitely from that continent. The headcanon is just picking which part. He easily goes to Japan and seems to have no real link to the Americas any more, so he's probably half-Japanese, half American-or-Canadian. There's a significant Japanese-Canadian population on the west coast of Canada, conveniently mapping right on to the breeding resident areas of the bald eagle territory. So I decided he's Japanese-Canadian._

 _\- I've been constantly aware whilst writing these stories that I'm coming from a Western perspective, specifically a British and Christian one. So I've been trying to frame these stories as secularly and atheistically as I can, because I know not everyone shares that perspective (least of all the Japanese characters I'm writing about!). But this chapter is a bit of an indulgence for me, introducing two British cultural traditions of watching_ The Snowman _and listening to either_ Carols from Kings _or_ A Feast Of Nine Lessons And Carols _, depending on what time it is and whether it's on TV or radio. If you'd like to know more about either of them, either go and look them up, or just drop me a PM and I'll do my best!_

 _\- find the_ Walking In The Air _line for a prize*!_

 _*disclaimer: there is no prize except much applause from me_


	21. Hope & Spirit

_Once again, sorry you didn't get this yesterday – my internet has been very intermittent!_

* * *

 **Gingka**

 **.**

 _10 years old_

It was round about this time of year that Gingka found himself with absolutely no time at all. Which wasn't particularly unusual, he supposed. Everyone in the village was busy. Most of the village adults spent days down at the foot of the mountain, getting food and other supplies before the passes were closed by snow.

The children, supervised by Hokuto, had the grand job of decorating the village for the Solstice Celebration before their parents came back.

Hyoma and Gingka had always been competitive over who had the best-decorated house (Hyoma almost always won, because he was slightly taller and could get more branches from the trees to wrap around the door frame, but Gingka had a better eye for colour-co-ordination), and a proper house-decorating day was never complete without at least one beybattle.

It was the best time of year, he always thought. Everyone was so cheerful as the houses turned emerald with evergreens from the forest. Whilst the coldest parts of winter were yet to come, this would be a spot of hope to hold on to when the snows came and cut them off for months on end.

And if the worst came to the worst, the clash of two heated beyspirits would keep him warm.

.

 _12 years old_

Gingka knew he should be in Koma Village. It was Solstice time, when everyone got together for a big party, celebrating the fact that the days were about to start getting longer again, and the darkness was passed for the next year. He was supposed to be busy, with fewer hours in the day than he needed for all the things he had to do, preparing to bring light and hope back to the world once more.

But the darkness was all around him, as it had been ever since the Lighting Ceremony had failed and L-Drago had been stolen from its prison. He had nothing to hold on to. His father was dead. The sacred duty that he had been preparing to take over had been shattered, and L-Drago was loose in the world once more. He hadn't seen Hyoma in months, not since leaving Koma Village.

But he couldn't go back. Not without getting L-Drago back. That was his duty, the only thing he had to do as he walked through the grey streets in search of clues as to where Doji had taken the strange boy with white hair who had killed his father.

Getting L-Drago back was the only hope he had of the light shining through once more, as the Darkness crept close around the world and the days grew ever more hopeless as spirits faltered in the face of it.

.

 _15 years old_

Gingka was utterly unsurprised to find himself with no time at all as the winter rolled towards the end of the year.

There wasn't even time to go back to Koma Village this year – his father had organised a Winter Spectacular tournament, scheduled to start on the 24th, and it was open to everyone. That meant that a sizeable group were currently staying in the WBBA tower, with all the chaos that usually entailed.

The weirdest bit was that he was so busy and yet he didn't have any of his normal duties. He wasn't in charge of decorating anything this time; Yuu, Tithi, Kenta and (surprisingly) Masamune had insisted that they were going to do that. He wasn't in charge of cooking, not with Benkei, Madoka and Chi-Yun monopolising the kitchen. He wasn't even in charge of organising battles, as Hikaru and Hyoma had firmly told him that _no_ he was _not_ allowed to schedule himself to fight in every single battle even if he did want to fight everyone. It wasn't fair on everyone else.

And yet Gingka still found himself rushed off his feet, between meeting people at stations and airports, going grocery-shopping with the few bladers who didn't have jobs to do already (Kyouya and Aguma, as it turned out, which made for a very interesting trip), reorganising rooms and meal plans when the Europeans announced they weren't coming, only to have to reinstate the plans with different names when the Americans announced they _were…_

It was a time of busy-ness and fun, of light that wrapped around his home and his heart, and of friends that gave him hope that the future was going to be just fine.

 _._

 _18 years old_

It was always the way. Whenever Gingka wanted to be surrounded by noise and laughter and people, he found himself alone in the wilds with nothing but the wind for company.

Whenever he wanted peace and quiet, people found him.

Technically this time _he_ had found people. The little village on the river delta had little enough to share this deep in winter, but they were as hospitable as possible, and Gingka did his best to repay their kindness by teaching the younger members of the village.

They were pretty good already – their local technique was using beys to cut through reeds to allow them into the deeper water where the bigger fish swam, and the alligators that lurked in the swamp knew to leave villagers well enough alone or risk a beyblade to the eye. But there was always something to learn, always something to offer and teach, and Gingka delighted in bringing the children's beyspirits to their fullest potential.

This was where he found hope now – in trusting others to carry the shining light of a true beyspirit and keep it burning long after he had disappeared from sight.

He didn't mind being so busy that he couldn't see any of his friends at the Solstice if it meant he was able to bring that hope and that burning joy in a good fight well fought to the whole world, creating a shield of light to stand against the Darkness forever.


	22. Cold & Crowds

**Tsubasa**

Some people liked travelling at Christmas. Tsubasa was not one of them.

The last day of walking, starting halfway across the mountains and heading down – finally – to Metal City, had been particularly horrible. The day had started out wet, with rain rolling in unexpectedly overnight, and despite Eagle waking him up as the first drops fell Tsubasa had been unable to find better shelter before he was wet enough to be miserable about it.

Then, apparently because the weather hadn't thrown enough at him, the rain had changed to sleet by morning.

With no choice in the matter, Tsubasa had started to work his way down out of the mountains. He didn't like the cold. The wind cut through his damp clothes, and the longer he walked the more he found himself wishing that he had taken Hyoma's offer of leaving with him the following day and taking the train down the mountain. Being in Koma Village for their Solstice celebrations had been a treat for him, an unexpected invitation from Hyoma and sanctioned by Hokuto. There was always so much to learn about the history of his sport there.

But he also wanted to understand how the village remained so well hidden, and what had brought it to basically isolate itself, and so he had insisted on travelling back down the mountain alone.

Now he was beginning to wonder if that was a mistake.

Eagle, grumpy and soggy, was less than companionable, so Tsubasa trekked along on his own. If it hadn't been for the rain, it would have been reasonable nice despite the cold. But being cold and wet and miles from home did not make for a happy journey, and he buried his hands as deep in his pockets as he could.

The lights and towers of the city gradually came closer, misty through the haze of sleet. Houses sprang up around him, getting denser and closer together the further he walked. The wind was less bitter here, and as darkness fell the sleet finally stopped, but the number of people around him had increased significantly.

Of course. It was the 24th December. Young couples were walking about together, celebrating their romantic holiday. Other people, as he got closer to the centre of the city, were shopping for food or presents or decorations. Hawkers sold their wares, shouting over each other to be heard. The crush grew and grew as more and more people surrounded him, even to the point that they were all but pressed up against him.

He was cold, he was wet, he was tired, and he _really_ didn't have the patience to deal with more than a couple of people at a time. Eagle wasn't being helpful, his house was still a mile away, and this was shaping up to be a pretty terrible Christmas after what had been a beautiful Solstice ceremony.

Tsubasa squeezed between two people, only to discover to his embarrassment that it was two people having an actual conversation, instead of just happening to pass each other slowly.

Finally, _finally_ , the crowds started to thin out again. Tsubasa breathed a sigh of relief, only to almost immediately pull a face as it started raining once more.

"Typical," he muttered, but set his mind on home. There was a hot bath that could be run in fifteen minutes, just long enough to update everyone at the WBBA that he was home, and a kitchen that should still have some old tinned food that would still be safe to eat. He did not want to go into any shops until the Christmas chaos had passed, for groceries or otherwise.

Somehow, the rain made it seem even further to get to his house. His home was going to be cold, but it would also be dry and empty, and that was all he was looking forward to.

… except, as he opened the front door, he discovered that his home was warm, dry, and _full of people._

"Happy Christmas!"

Okay, maybe not _full._ But any house containing Yuu Tendo, Madoka Amano, Kenta Yumiya and Hikaru Hasuma was definitely more full than the way he left it.

"What are you all doing here?" he asked, more shocked than anything else. Yuu stretched out an arm and Eagle happily landed on it, shaking the water off his feathers.

"Hyoma called," Madoka said. "He said you'd insisted on walking back from Koma, and it had been sleeting most of the day so he suggested warming your house up a bit."

"You broke into my house," Tsubasa said flatly.

"Not exactly," Hikary told him. "Hyoma phoned Madoka, who called me to see if I'd heard whether you'd called in to say you were hiding out somewhere to stay out of the sleet, then when we established you were actually walking in this weather we called Yuu to see if he had a spare key, and be did but it turned out he was with Kenta, so that's why we're all here." She smiled. "We just wanted to make sure you were okay, that's all."

Being cold was awful. Being in the heaving crowds of the centre of town was awful. Being both at the same time was the worst of all.

But somehow being cold (albeit slowly warming up in the heat from the radiators) and surrounded by people he knew wasn't so bad.

Next time, though, he was going to take the train.


	23. Gift Boxes & Icicles

**Kyouya**

Kyouya got the impression that most of his fellow bladers didn't really like the cold. When winter started creeping in and the nights arrived earlier, he usually found himself the last one to leave the outside training dish in the park to head home for dinner. At first he'd assumed that he was just that much more disciplined than they were, that much more determined to train and get better regardless of the situation, but in summer everyone would stay much later, well after the sun had disappeared.

Then he had discovered that going 'home for dinner' meant going to get food and then heading straight back out to the _inside_ training dish at the WBBA headquarters. At that point, he figured it was because they didn't like being cold.

Kyouya loved the cold. Being in Africa with his team was great, but the heat wrapped around his head like a wet blanket and he could never quite think straight there. But back in Japan, in the winter when the temperature plunged? That was his element. His head was clear, his hearing picked up every tiny crackle of frost, the air smelled fresh and clean and full of promise, and he could have sworn he could see further.

Part of it was toughness too, of course – being able to pull a ripcord with freezing fingers or hold an attack line against a winter gale was part of training to be the best. But a lot of it was just that Kyouya liked winter more than summer.

He had been outside most of the day, training with Kenta and Tsubasa and Benkei, but whilst they disappeared at five pm it was close to eleven when he finally called Leone back to him and set off for his house, hungry and tired.

The walk wasn't far, but it led past a couple of rows of trees that he always slowed down to look at. They were bare of leaves and petals now, their many-fingered branches gently holding the stars in place, or standing out clear against the clouds. Some of them had been decorated by the city authorities, each branch lined with tiny lights, but Kyouya's favourites were the ones that were on the side-road that led to his street – just out of the way enough that the city hadn't covered them in lights.

Instead, dozens and dozens of icicles hung from every branch, almost like weird leaves themselves. When the wind blew, several dozen would snap off and shatter into razor-sharp shards on the ground, only to be back again the next morning as the dew crystallised on the remaining stump. It was Kyouya's favourite part of winter, the proof of fragile beauty that could still cause such damage if it fell on someone's head, or even on their car if it was a larger one. It reminded him to respect everything, no matter how delicate it looked, and never underestimate anyone no matter how powerful he thought he was in relation to them.

Tonight, the stars shone frostily through the branches, their light refracting endlessly through the frozen water. Kyouya wandered home slowly, watching the rainbows dance in the dark trees, and laughed to himself that the others hated the cold so much that they missed this. It was his to treasure alone, his own private art that changed every day. The danger of it just added to its beauty.

When he finally got to his front door and looked away from the trees, he got quite a surprise. On his doorstep was a large cardboard box.

This was very odd. He had not ordered anything, nor was he expecting gifts. It wasn't very heavy either, when he finally managed to wrangle it through the door. He dumped it in the middle of his mostly-bare front room, next to the single chair that was the only piece of furniture he currently owned. Puzzled and secretly very curious, he settled down on the floor to open it.

First, of course, he had to get through the packing tape that had been wrapped all the way around it. Fingernails proved useless, so he had to get up and head through to his equally threadbare kitchen to find the sharpest knife he had. That cut through it relatively easily, and he was able to pull the top flaps of the box open.

Inside the cardboard box was another cardboard box, also sealed with tape. This one was red.

Kyouya sighed, and tipped the new box out, tossing the larger one to one side. Then he dug the knife under the parcel tape again and opened the second box… to reveal _another_ box, this one gold with a silver ribbon.

Kyouya frowned. Now he was beginning to doubt whether this was a surprise gift at all. Just to check, he opened the third box, to reveal as expected a fourth box, in blue and green stripes.

Scowling and deeply suspicious, Kyouya went back to the first box to look for a return address. It took him a while to spot it, written on the bottom flap.

"I should have known," he muttered to himself.

Then he went back to opening the boxes.

.

When Nile arrived a week later, the first thing he did was look around, and then stop in shock at the sight of Kyouya's new Christmas tree.

"What is _that?_ " he asked. Kyouya glared.

"You know exactly what it is," he said. "You sent it to me."

Nile laughed and held up his hands. "Guilty," he admitted. "But that really wasn't what I expected you to do with it."

Kyouya looked at his 'tree', which in reality was nothing more than a stack of _nine_ gift boxes of descending sizes, wrapped with tinsel he'd 'borrowed' from Tsubasa's supply and a string of lights that had originally belonged to Madoka (Gingka had bought her some that were beyblade-shaped, so she hadn't needed this set). "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Nile shrugged. "Well, you know they say lions are just really big cats. I kind of expected to find you'd made a den in one of them."

Kyouya opened his mouth in outrage, then closed it, then opened it again, then closed it at Nile's half-contrite, half-amused expression. "A den." he said flatly. "You expected to come into _my_ home and find me sleeping in a cardboard box like some pet _house-cat_?"

"And that time in Kenya?"

"THAT WAS DIFFERENT."

"Not the way I remember it… I'm teasing you, Kyouya, stop acting so serious all the time! I sent you the boxes because you said Benkei had run out of boxes to put people's presents in and wanted some more, and the ones in the marketplace are the loveliest I've ever seen. I didn't really think you'd turn them into a den."

"Then why didn't you put a letter or something in the box to tell me what it was? Especially if it was meant to go to Benkei."

"I take your point. I didn't realise how fast the post was, I was certain I'd be here before the parcel."

Kyouya looked at his 'tree'. "Guess I should take this down, then, if it's actually Benkei's." It was a shame. He'd actually grown quite fond of it. It had livened up his front room no end.

Nile shook his head. "Nah. This is the most 'you' Christmas tree I've ever seen. I don't know whether it's just because it's so unique or because you're you and cardboard boxes are for cats and don't give me that look Kyouya, I'm teasing you again. Keep it. I can get my brothers to send more boxes over no problem." Then he grinned. "In the meantime, I can make you a proper lion's den out of the big box they came in."

" _Nile."_

"I'm joking!"


	24. Sacred & Goodwill

**Hikaru**

It was rare that Hikaru had much time to herself these days. In fact, she was pretty certain that the only way she would get a day off would be if the world looked like it was going to end again.

Of course, she could always _ask_ for a day off, and of course Ryo would give it to her, but she kind of dreaded what he might get up to in her absence. There were jokes among those who knew both her and Gingka's father that the _real_ Director of the WBBA was Hikaru Hasuma, not Ryo Hagane, and that most of her job was damage control. This wasn't strictly true, though the amount of time she spent rolling her eyes at Ryo's exuberance outweighed the time she spent doing anything else other than paperwork.

So when Ryo announced that the WBBA Tower would be shut for three days across the Winter Solstice, from the 20th to the 23rd, she suddenly found herself with more time than she knew what to do with.

Ryo, it turned out, was going back to Koma Village to take part in their annual Solstice Celebration, along with Gingka and Yuki. "It's a sacred tradition," he had told her solemnly. "We have to pay our respects at Mount Hagane." Then he had grinned. "And share all our news with our old friends, and eat lots of food, and welcome Yuki in to the Koma Village family. That too."

That had got her wondering. He had said that it was a _sacred tradition_ , something special and unique and almost religious. It had to happen at the Solstice, and it could only happen if everyone was together to celebrate it.

So what about the rest of the world? What was it that made this time of year so special to so many people? Obviously there were those who had a religious festival at this time of year, or even a non-religious celebration, and that called to their hearts. But there were others who didn't have any ties like that.

What was it that made the last days of December special?

At first she was prepared to blame the Americans and the Europeans for transporting their traditions across the sea into her country, but that was only part of it. Something just felt different about this time of year.

Was it having lots of food, a feast against the famine that would once have stalked the land in winter? No, she decided. There were lots of other feasts – festivals and harvests and more – and none of them felt like this.

What about being with other people? Friends and family who so rarely came together would gather at this time to see old acquaintances. Surely that was what made it special. But when she thought about it, her friends and what was left of her family often reconvened at tournaments and battles and just because they felt like it, so that wasn't it.

Was it the weather, cold and wet and icy? No, not that either – other months were just as miserable and they weren't as special. Nor was it the fact that you could shelter from that cold by the fire.

Presents, then? Giving and receiving gifts given with love and care (or not)? Hikaru had quite a collection of paperweights now, as Ryo gave her one as a joke present every year, ever since she had complained that he always spun through her office like the King Lion Tearing Blast and messed up her in-tray. So now she got a beautiful blown-glass paperweight every year. But people gave presents for birthdays and anniversaries too, and that didn't feel like this.

Just what was it?

Decorations? She had protested at being forced to decorate her office until Ryo told her that she would get to pick all of it. A few days later, she had the prettiest office in the city at least, if not the country.

But she could decorate whenever she wanted, really, if she just asked. That wasn't what made December so unique.

Hikaru found herself staring out of the window across the city, lit up in the dark. It was quiet in her office, and it looked like most of the townspeople had headed inside too. The whole place was so peaceful.

Not that the world was all that peaceful in reality. Just a few days before, she had received a worrying email from the Russian bladers, suggesting that there was some sort of disturbance in the Earth's atmosphere again, and of course there were wars going on all around the world even as she stood there in the quiet.

She wanted it to be, though. She wanted all the fighting to be over. It was Christmas time. Wasn't it supposed to be about celebrating peace and goodwill to all people? Wasn't that how the cards she had received put it?

Was that why December felt so special? Because everyone was united for once in a wish to have peace and happiness, for the world to fall silent and breathe in the songs from the sky? Because it was the time when the year was coming to an end, and there was so much hope for the future?

Yes, she decided. The reason the last days of December always felt so different, so special, so _sacred_ , was because no matter what you celebrated or what you looked forward to, or even if you had nothing to celebrate at all, it was a moment when the world waited in hope for a brighter future, for a return of the light, and for a new year dawning.


	25. Announcement & Advent

_The final chapter! A slightly delayed Happy Christmas, if you celebrate it, and if not, then I hope you had a really lovely day!_

 _Just a brief thank you to everyone who has returned and re-read this story every day, even when I wasn't exactly managing to update it on the right days all the time! Your reviews and favourites and follows mean a lot to me, and it's wonderful to come back to the fandom properly after so long away and see that it's still active in its own little way. Phosphorus will be continued in January, and there are some more ideas floating in my head that are starting to take proper form, so don't think that I'm going anywhere!_

 _This chapter really isn't Christmassy, to be honest. And, despite appearances, it is **not** the start of a new multi-chapter fic! Just getting that out of the way._

* * *

 **Dynamis**

The heavens sang their songs slowly, but he always heard them in his dreams. Sometimes it took him a long time to understand what it was he was hearing, and sometimes he spoke the words that he had been given before he understood them at all, but he was the conduit through which the constellations spoke. That was his role.

So when the freezing night crystallised his sleeping mind on to two terrifying concepts, he was up and moving almost before he realised he was awake.

 _Hail to the arriving king,_ sang the stars. _Terrible is his power, and mighty is his kingdom._

 _All must stand, or all will fall,_ the constellations replied.

Even now, more than ten years after the event, Dynamis still had nightmares of being forced under King Hades' will. He had thought that Hades' return would be impossible, but the stars never lied. And if Hades was returning, he was going to need all the help he could get.

"I speak the will of the heavens," he said, hearing his voice ring around his ancient temple home. "Another threat approaches hence, and we must once again rise to meet it."

"Funnily enough, I'd already figured that bit out."

Dynamis startled, then relaxed. As usual, he had forgotten about the young man he shared the temple with, who was standing leaning against the stone pillar to the left of the door arch. Tithi had grown tall in the past few years, and was now almost the same height as Dynamis. Sharp and smart and with a constant thirst for knowledge, he had been more than just a friendly voice in the otherwise lonely temple for a long time now. He learned everything with a voracity that both shocked and pleased Dynamis. If it hadn't been for Tithi's insistence on returning to the lower altitudes and going to visit the Japanese bladers once or twice a year, he might even have considered training him up as his protégé.

"So you know of what I speak?" Dynamis was vaguely aware that he was still speaking with the voice of the heavens, and struggled to switch his tone to a less formal one. "How do you know?"

Tithi just laughed. "Well, if it hasn't been obvious to you that there's something building up in the world, then you don't leave your mountain often enough, Teacher. Besides, I think you'll find everyone decided to gather anyway."

"And what does _that_ mean?"

"Tithi, have you got him ye – oh. There you are, Dynamis. Come on, everyone's waiting for you."

 _Everyone?_ Dynamis stared at the newcomer – a tall young man with white hair and a red streak over his right eye. "Ryuto. What are you doing on my mountain again? And what is this _everyone_ you speak of? How can everyone be here?"

"It's the Solstice!" Ryuto laughed. "And it's the twelfth anniversary of the fall of Nemesis, what better day to announce that we've got another fight on our hands? Tithi sent out a message telling everyone that you two were hosting a reunion that you just might make an important announcement at, so everyone's turned up and I mean _everyone_. Sneaking them on to the mountain without you noticing was pretty tough, but there's secret tunnels that go all the way through the maze below. Gingka and I mapped them together, so we found a secret entrance. Come on!"

"Tithi." Dynamis said, voice just a little bit dangerous. Tithi shrugged.

"I know you, Teacher. You were starting to look at the sky too much, and not pay attention to the Earth. If the world needs the Legendary Bladers back again, we're going to need _all_ of us. And if you want to know how important it is, _Gingka's_ here."

That… changed things. Gingka was more willing to show his face at gatherings now that his epic quest across the world was over, but it was still difficult to track him down when you wanted him. Dynamis followed Ryuto and Tithi to the entrance to the temple and stared down into the lower courtyard in shock. They hadn't been exaggerating when they said everyone was there.

Tables had been set up in between the ancient stones, and a huge bonfire was burning right in the centre. On one side, a group he vaguely recognised as China's team were busy setting up a buffet table, whilst a pair he knew much better – Legendary Blader Aguma and Bao just next to him – worked on building the bonfire to a more manageable size. On other other side of the courtyard, Tsubasa Otori, Madoka Amano, and Yuki Mizusawa and a woman Dynamis knew only as Hikaru were deep in conversation. Yuki kept pointing up to the stars excitedly, and Dynamis suddenly remembered that Yuki's role had been very similar to his the last time they had all been needed. It was good that he was here again.

They weren't the only ones who had been on King Hades' Island. Dynamis knew the man with black hair tipped with green – _Masamune,_ that was his name – had been there, and he knew the two next to him from the helicopter ride home, Zeo and Toby. He'd never forgotten their faces, seemingly so energised when he was so exhausted, and the way Zeo had kept reassuring all of them that the shadows in the corners of their eyes were not the threat returning for yet another round. It had been a peace and hope he had clung on to until he could get his own mind in order, letting someone else take that burden of watching just for a few hours. The group of three, along with the Legendary Bladers Chris and King, were apparently trying to put decorations up on the stones, stringing ribbons through the holes that made the Cygnus stones and tying lanterns between them.

The European champions he recognised from Tithi's descriptions. Team Excalibur often invited Yuu and Tithi to challenge them, recognising in them the core of a strong and unique tag-team. Tonight, they seemed to be wearing wreaths on their heads, and were making more that they handed to anyone who walked by their table. How odd, Dynamis thought. Crowning themselves like kings and queens – was that what the heavens had meant? No, that had spoken of a single King, and a threat of terrible power. As strong as the European team were, they were not a threat of that calibre. In fact, they would be welcome assistance.

The African team, including Kyouya Tategami, were easier to recognise. Nile, Demure, Kyouya and Benkei sat just out of the glare of the fire, eating what looked like gingerbread they had brought themselves, and talking with someone he didn't recognise at all.

"That's Hyoma," Tithi said quietly in his ear, noticing where Dynamis was looking. "He's Gingka's childhood friend, he helped me track him down. Normally he'd be guarding his village in Japan, but even he knows how important this is going to be, so he's here too."

"It really is everyone," Dynamis wondered. "But how did you know I would have an announcement to make? Even I didn't know what it would be until I spoke the words just before you got here."

"I know you can hear all the voices of the constellations," Tithi smiled, "but I can hear Quetzalcoatl. He's ancient. He knows when things are about to go wrong, even if he's only got a tiny bit of the picture. So yeah, I didn't know exactly when you'd work out what the message from the heavens was, but I knew by the time everyone got here you'd have figured out something was happening at least."

"Besides," Ryuto said. "Even if you hadn't worked it out, it was about time that we all got together again. It's been years since I've seen some of these guys." He darted off down the steps to where Masamune, Chris and King were hanging more lanterns up. "Hey, let me help!"

Tithi briefly put a hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to carry this alone," he said. "Tsubasa and Yuu taught me that Christmas time is best when you're surrounded by the people you love. It's not exactly Christmas, because that's not what we're celebrating, but it's the Solstice. Twelve years ago, we were strongest together, and it took all of us to bear the burden of protecting the world. Let us take some of it again. That's what we're here for."

Dynamis looked at his young friend, _really_ looked. "You've grown wise," was all he said, but Tithi lit up like a Christmas tree, eyes sparkling in the light from the bonfire.

"Hey Dynamis! Hey Tithi!"

Dynamis looked down. At the bottom of the steps, smiling up at them, stood Yuu Tendo and Kenta Yumiya, both much taller than Dynamis remembered. Yuu waved when he realised Dynamis had spotted them.

"Hey Yuu!" Tithi called, and scampered down the steps to greet his friends properly. Dynamis watched him go fondly, but with a sense of wonder that he hadn't had before. Had everyone changed so much in twelve years?

"Dynamis."

He knew _that_ voice. "Gingka Hagane. It would seem that I am the last to know of something this time around. I am… not used to this."

Gingka Hagane straightened up from where he had been lurking in the shadow of the door pillars. "Tithi likes surprising people. You most of all. He seems to think you deserve it."

"I am not fond of surprises," Dynamis muttered, and Gingka laughed.

"He did mention that you might have something important to tell us," he said, changing the subject. "Let me guess, it's not good." He looked around almost sadly. "I doubt Tithi would have gone to so much trouble to make sure everyone was here at the same time if it was good."

Dynamis sighed. "No, it is not good news, Gingka. This celebration cannot continue too long. The heavens tell of something coming, something huge and dark and terribly dangerous, and the arrival of a King of terrifying power. More than that I do not know, but we must prepare for it as soon as we can, or we will fall before we even have a chance to fight."

"Of course there's something coming," Gingka said, eyes so much older and wiser than they had been when he had stood before Dynamis that first time, uncertain even of the power he held let alone his role in protecting the world. "You don't have to know the heavens to see that. All you have to do is watch what's happening to the world. And we're here to learn as much as we can all together. But… just for today, can't we have peace, and happiness, and love?"  
Dynamis opened his mouth to object that the darkness would not stop just because it was Christmas, and then shut it again.

"Yes," he said. "Everyone gathers together in peace and friendship tonight. It bodes well for the future that all of us are together again. It will not be easy for the enemy to split us apart, and if we stand together we will be far stronger than we could be alone."

Gingka smiled. "Come on, then," he said. "Let's go and enjoy the party."

Stepping into the noise and bustle that was nearly thirty people in his usually-empty courtyard felt surprisingly comforting, like the warmth of home after too long outside in the winter air. Dynamis hadn't quite realised that he'd actually missed the bladers he knew. He followed Gingka to join the little gathering of WBBA bladers, Tsubasa and Madoka and Hikaru, all of whom greeted him enthusiastically. Moments later, Dynamis saw Nile nudge Kyouya and point out Gingka, whereupon the Lion immediately stood up and came to join them as well.

"Gingka," he said, voice half welcome and half challenge. "You've been gone far too long, I haven't been able to have a proper battle with you for years. Just wait until you see mine and Leone's-"

"New special move," Yuu, Kenta and Tithi chorused from behind him, then all burst out laughing at his offended expression.

"C'mon, Yo-yo," Yuu grinned. "You've been saving that special move for _months._ When did you create it? Last November or something, wasn't it? And you _still_ haven't used it against anyone else just because you want Gingka to be the first to face it."

"I'll accept your challenge," Gingka said, and as Tsubasa opened his mouth to object, clarified " _After_ we get down from the mountain, okay?"

"Fine. I've waited this long, I can wait another day."

"This is wonderful," Madoka said, looking around. "I haven't seen everyone all together in the same place since the first anniversary."

"Team Wang Hu Zhong, Team Excalibur, Team Dungeon, Team Wild Fang," Hikaru counted them off on her fingers. "It's certainly an unusual collection outside of a world tournament. Then you've got every single Legendary Blader as well."

"All except one." Yuu's smile was fond but a little sad. "There'll always be one missing."

"Nah," Kenta said, with a similar look in his eyes. "The Dragon's always in the sky. As long as his stars are in the sky, he's still with us in spirit."

Madoka nodded. "Actually, look up," she said. "This observatory was built to mirror Cygnus, but look which constellation is just to the north-east."

"That's Draco!" Yuu got there first, identifying the stars that Dynamis knew so well. "And that's Pegasus on the other side of Cygnus, look!"

"All where they should be," Gingka said. "All together, all part of the heavens. That's why we're all here. Just one constellation can't light up the sky on its own. You need all the stars of heaven to do that."

"That's why we came along," Wales said, coming up to join the group and bringing the rest of his wreath-crowned team with him. "We might not have been part of the last battle, but we can't fight this one alone, and if we waste time trying to get everyone together, it's just handing help to the other side. We'll be ahead of them this time."

"We must not get complacent, Wales," Julian said before Dynamis could say exactly the same thing. "Just because we have a head start doesn't mean we can waste it by thinking that we're ahead. Everyone needs to be on high alert."

"We will be," Tsubasa promised. "We've got worldwide resources this time. We'll be ready. No matter what the Darkness throws at us, we'll answer it with the light of hope and our burning beyspirits!"

"That sounded like a speech my dad would make," Gingka said. "You really are the Director of the WBBA." Tsubasa shrugged.

"Food's ready!" Aguma called across the courtyard, interrupting. "Come and get it!"

The next few minutes were filled with movement and chatter as the reunited bladers regrouped for the feast the Chinese teams had laid out for them.

"Ah, Chinese food at Christmas," Masamune grinned, and then laughed when he got curious looks from most of the others. "It's a cultural tradition thing, you wouldn't get it."

"Like _The Snowman_?" Tithi asked, and got even more blank looks.

"Are those wreaths traditional where you come from, Sophie?" Hikaru asked.

"Not really? They're not traditional to the country or even the culture, they're just a thing my family does every year."

"I think that's a tradition, Sophie," Madoka said. "We've all got traditions at this time of year, I think. It's nice to see other people's traditions for once. That way we can learn about them and respect them."

"The anniversaries were meant to be a tradition," Yuki said. "I thought we'd all meet up once a year to remember things, but it just didn't happen that way."

"We all got busy," Benkei shrugged. "I only managed to get away from the shop for long enough to come to this because the café next door agreed to lend us a few workers."

"But the important thing is that we're here now," Gingka said firmly. "All together as one team to stand against the Darkness. We can do this, just like Tsubasa said. We have the Legendary Bladers and their power, we have the strongest teams from all over the world, and we have the ones who have always supported us no matter what. If we stand together, we cannot lose!"

Kyouya straightened up proudly. "I don't like working in teams," he said. "But if this is anything like last time, then I guess I'd better get used to it."

"Aw, Yo-yo likes us!"

To Dynamis' surprise, Kyouya didn't object to the nickname, merely rolling his eyes as he took another steamed bun.

"Kyouya's letting me call him Yo-yo?" Yuu asked in mock surprise. "Now _that's_ a proper Christmas miracle! Not like the one I got last time."

"And what exactly do you mean by that, Yuu Tendo?"

The world fell silent. Not even the wind blew as every person gathered in preparation to face the Darkness turned to look up at the temple. Several expressions went clear through surprise into shock, and two in particular went from shock to _joy._

The stars had announced the coming of a king of terrible power and might. Dynamis had assumed that was King Hades, or worse. But as he turned with the rest to look towards the source of the voice, he suddenly understood.

Crowned with stars, a man stood above them on the steps of the temple, eyes burning candle-gold and coat flaring like a storm behind him, hair as white as snow with a streak of holly-berry red. Behind him, looming like fire against the sky, a sinuous figure of a great creature blocked the sight of the constellation it had come from.

" _Impossible,"_ Kenta breathed.

The heavens had not told of a King arriving. They had sung the advent of an _Emperor._

.

FIN

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End file.
